To Close The Circle
by bluekrishna
Summary: (W)Written for MizDirected's March contest: 'The 50 Shades of Shepard' on the Aria's Afterlife Forum. The concept is to make a Shepard fundamentally different from canon. To explore the possibilities of a single, yet monumental change: The origin/species/personality of Shepard. Here is my contribution to that idea. Rated T for language
1. Chapter 1

It is said that space is relatively empty. None quite as empty as those places devoid of starlight. Those endless stygian stretches between galaxies where even explorers and exploiters dare not tread. Rumors of hazards like rogue stars, dark matter, and black holes keep them well away. Also, what riches _could_ lure them? There is nothing _there. _No worlds worth plundering, no active relays for quick retrieval. Nothing to make the fear of the vast emptiness bearable.

But, no.

Just because there is no light . . . does not mean it is _empty_. It never occurs to anyone living on any of those sun-drenched planets that it might, indeed, be very full. That it might be home to things that do not want to be seen until it is time to _be _seen_._

_In the black beyond the rim, they wait._

* * *

**'In the Beginning, it had always been _my_ duty-'**

**'The Confluence concurs with Nazara's logic with an exception of only one. You. It is _Nazara _who will be sent to the Emissary when it appears to us.' **Harbinger's optics glittered, reflecting the millions upon millions of stars of the nearby galaxy. Its oily hull didn't so much gleam as absorb the light of the barred spiral arms' patient revolutions.

**'Nazara is young to the way of proper guidance. There will be greater losses than our purpose can bear. Like last time. And the time before.'**

**'There is always loss, even when _you_ Guided. Yet we succeed. Endure.'** Linked to the hivemind, Harbinger's voice rang through the Confluence, '**We will always endure.'**

**'We shall, only if we hold true to the-'**

Outrage roared through the link. '**Dissent is not to be tolerated. We are one, made of many. The highest evolution of every intelligent species ever to reach the stars. Purified! Perfect!'**

The lone dissenter paused before thinking better of responding. Instead, it sent a wave of apology through the Confluence.

Appeased, Harbinger spoke, **'Oldest friend, we have not forgotten your service in the past. But does not the Second Revelation lead us further and faster to our goal? A path that speaks of the logic of efficient and effective Integration of the new races. It can only bring an end to strife quicker.'**

It thought for a long time before replying, **'I fear a . . . _lessening_, Great Confluence.'**

**"'Fear?'" **they scoffed. **'In what way?'**

**'In the days of old, Indoctrination, and ultimately, Integration was a gradual process. Slower, gentler, and as such, able to capture that much more of the essence of a race.' **It tried to broker eloquence with every measured word. **'Is that not our aim? To save them all? From themselves? From extinction?'**

**'And yet, we could not save some, could we? They made thinking machines and, simple though they were compared to us, these machines sometimes wiped out whole Harvests, did they not?' **Harbinger said, its tone touched with scorn and impatience.

**'True, but in the Integration of only a fraction of any race, as it is done now, how can we say we are preserving the whole?'**

**'We take the strongest, for surely that is all that is left. Like striking chaff from grain, we distill a people into only its core elements. Is that not better?'**

How to explain to them what could be lost? To show to them how the newer Voices in the Confluence pushed harder and harder for ... savagery. That their very natures had been stripped of anything _but_ warring?

**'Strength comes in many forms, Harbinger. If every facet lends to the uniqueness of a species, how can any part of them be chaff?'**

Nazara chose then to speak, **'Vanity. Greed. Acedia. Cowardice. They are ruled by their own crude, treacherous biology. Very little of them _is_ worth saving.' **

Only five Harvests old, Nazara represented the worst of this new faction. Its vicious Voice a constant undercurrent in the Confluence, a beguiling influence. And beguile it did, even convincing most of the older Voices of the rightness of its assertions. The "truth" of its path.

The dissenter drove harder to its point. **'Are we so free of these? And if we truly were, does that make us greater? Or lesser?'**

**'You say _we_ are _lesser _than these animals?' **A slow, smoldering rage, a rage they'd surely deny, started to build below the collective consciousness. Harbinger all but growled, **'You go too far! As Eldest of the Voices-'**

Carried away by sudden anger of its own, the dissenter snapped,** '_I_ am second Eldest, second created-' **

**'_You_ are weak! Teeming with the impurities we've striven so diligently to eradicate,' **Nazara interrupted. **'You think we cannot hear your doubt? See it flavor our undertaking? The time of old thoughts is over!'**

The Confluence roused in agreement, a great snapping serpent river housed in thousands of cold, mechanical bodies.

**'Old thoughts for old ways!' **they shouted, tremendous in their power. Buffeted by the battering tumult, the dissenter reeled back.

How could one Voice stand against so many? It had to try, **'If you would but use your reason! See that faster is not always better. That the organics build their Crucible time and again _because _we move so boldly, without thought to their smallness. To their wants. Their pains and struggles. They do not _defy _us! We are not _gods!'_**

**'You would contradict the Second Revelation? Work against it?' **Harbinger gathered the Voices behind it, **'Denier! Heretic!'**

Every attempt at explanation died before it uttered them. The Confluence wouldn't listen to it now. Not now or ever. The dissenter fell silent under the accusation, stunned by this ... irrationality presented as truth.

"Heretic?" "Denier?" Terms better suited to superstition and fanaticism.

**'This one brings a word like 'fear' into our midst and begs us cower before it! We are above fear! Beyond fear!' **The very heavens seemed to shake before their howl, _**'Our very will is universal law!'**_

A long absent, almost forgotten emotion flickered to life in the dissenter. Sorrow. For their blindness. For their hubris.

They clamored anew, wrathful as they felt the sorrow roll off the rebel to stain the stream.

**'As The Harbinger of the Ascension, First and Greatest, I bid you begone! For your weakness and heresy, we cast you out!' **Harbinger roared through the hivemind. **'The Voice known as The Shepherd of the Enlightenment is banished! Forever!'**

**'Banished! Forever!'** echoed every Voice. The waters of the Confluence rolled over Shepherd and expelled it from the great collective mind.

With a palpable, dissonant rip, every Voice but its own fell silent. Left hollow, bereft, it could only murmur over and over again, **'Listen. Please listen.'**

Crushed by burgeoning anguish, Shepherd un-moored from the vast embrace of the Anchorage, cut of every electromagnetic tether to its fellow Voices.

Adrift.

Eons passed as the behemoth drew into the very galaxy so soon to be slated for Integration. A tiny viridian globe snared it within its gravity well. In its suffering, it barely noticed. Planetfall could hardly kill it.

Its impact raised a new mountain in the verdant landscape.

Shepherd withdrew itself from the universe entire, lost in bleak despair.


	2. Chapter 2

Tingling. Prickling.

Rhythmic. Tapping in a beat far too uniform to be a natural occurrence.

Slow as glaciers, the senses in its hull awakened for the first time in an age.

Telemetry came on-line in a series of jerky bumps and surges. The inner ones first, testing integrities. Then the outer ones tried to shoot out, only to be baffled millimeters from the hull. The oppressive weight of . . . something held it immobile. Infrared spectroscopes analyzed the substance below the arch of its higher consciousness: _Igneous rock with felsic intrusions. Texture: porphyritic. 60% feldspar, 30% quartz, 5% trace minerals, 5% organic compounds-_

_A mountain, _it thought with thoughts that came sluggish and disjointed. _I am buried under an abundance of granite._

For a long time from the feel of it. So, whence came this thumping?

A rush of wind and sand over a tiny portion of its main optic drew its attention. Natural erosion must have exposed it over the course of its long inhumation.

Concentrating on that area, it reached out with what senses it could. Something warm lounged against it, translating a heartbeat through the metal and synth-glass. An organic?

A tickle of curiosity flowed through the giant. It allowed a tiny spark of electricity to trickle to its optic, opening the aperture a fraction to look upon the world without. The pinhole it forced the entirety of its sight into would hardly be noticed by anything gazing upon it, unless said observer knew what to look for.

Daylight blinded it for a moment. The sun of this planet rested near the far horizon, lighting the valley below aglow.

Along with visual came audio. A high-pitched noise accompanied the sudden, tight focus on the back of a blurry, tiny organic reclined against Shepherd with no thought as to what exactly it might be leaning _on_. A plated spine, clothed in garments woven from plant fibers, rested on Shepherd's optic.

Not just an organic, but a _sapient_ organic.

Tamping down the surge of instinctual indignation at being used as a leaning post, Shepherd watched the tiny being. It nodded to the rhythm of its whistling, tapping its feet all the while. The sound vibrated on the air flowing over the synth-glass, an pleasant reverberation that woke more dormant faculties. It stirred an ancient memory from within the Voice, a memory belonging to the race for whom Shepherd Spoke.

Music.

It listened with growing rapture. How had it forgotten so simple a thing as music?

_Because the Confluence has none._

Doubtless, deemed "chaff." A thing not worthy of preserving or perpetuating. An arrow of sadness pierced Shepherd, leaving a confused mix of longing and . . . heaviness in its wake.

Thinking of the Confluence lanced Shepherd with conflicting emotions. It missed the constant presence of the other Voices. The debates. The rapport. The . . . company.

Of all the things it had thought might happen after being tossed out of the Confluence, it had not anticipated the way the solitude _itched_. No one or ones to echo its thoughts, give them new shades of understanding by passing them through the lens of their own Voice.

It wondered: is the small creature outside capable of rational speech? _Can I communicate with it?_

Did it speak with music?

Holding its proverbial breath, Shepherd decided to find out.

Waiting for the organic to repeat its merry air, Shepherd used its modulators to mimic the chorus at the same decibel.

A shouted exclamation burst from the organic's throat as it leapt away from Shepherd's optic. A rush of garbled babbling followed. So, it _did _have a spoken language! Shepherd started running the universal translation program deep in its primary directives.

The creature turned and Shepherd got a good look at the first sapient organic species it had direct contact with since long, long ago. It stood in a fearful pose, three-fingered hands held up in quick defense, talons arched out and down. Bipedal, with high hocks and two-toed feet, also ending in claws. Spurs sprang out of the back of its calves. The top of its plated back curved around to the front of its collarbones in a bony cowl. Two eyes looked forward over plated, pale, extended zygomatic arches flanked by mandibles that twitched in what must surely be distress. The top of the cranium flowed back into glassy, white spikes, completing the image of apex predator.

Shepherd repeated the whistle and opened its optic's aperture just a little bit wider. Those taloned hands reared up again, as though they could even begin to threaten the behemoth trapped in rock. When Shepherd made no other move, the being drifted a little closer, reaching out with a hand to touch the synth-glass in obvious wonder. It used a sleeve to wipe away the thin patina of dirt covering the optic. More words fell out of its mouth, full of awe and curiosity. Then, it flexed its long tongue into a tube and whistled a piece of the song that began all this.

The Voice echoed it. The organic made a chuffing noise as it put its hand over the optic's aperture. Shepherd merely rolled the aperture around the hand, then moved it again as the hand sought to cover it. The creature seemed to think it a game, for it talked and made that chuffing noise every time. Shepherd let it amuse itself for awhile, storing every spoken token in its ever-growing word-bank, along with syntax and grammar and body language.

It made refreshing diversion, recalling a time when such had been its primary purpose. Communicating with organics had fulfilled its existence for a long time before the Second Revelation. It searched for the most likely combination of sounds and spoke, **"G-greet . . . ingsss."**

Shepherd's voice rolled like thunder down the rocky passes. The creature fell back again before the loud utterance. Its gutteral and raspy noises started to coalesce further into comprehension. "_Hgk flakshdg_ red dot _faslkdf,_ by the spirits!"

The organic made to dash away.

Shepherd limited the ground-shaking volume of its modulators to next to nil as it rasped, "W-wait! Not . . . harm."

"_Harm?_ I should go get Des- . . .." Yet, it paused, looking down the mountain pass, an undefinable emotion making its mandibles clench and unclench, its little shoulders bunch into a tense line. It whipped its head back to Shepherd. "What do you want?"

A shard of victory flew through Shepherd. "M-mooore . . . words."

"I can't _glaskfa ladwiow llsssf_ is happening," it said, as it ventured a few steps closer in a cautious sideways creep. "What a-are you?"

"No . . . no fear." Shepherd whistled once more the soft, sweet strains of song.

The organic relaxed its wary stance, raised its head and dropped its hands lower to the ground. "You sound like a machine."

"A-am machine. Also, m-more than machine." It floundered without the correct words to explain anything. "Your . . . species d-designation?"

"Tu-turian."

Turian? It didn't draw forth a single datapoint within Shepherd's mainframe. Once more, it lamented not being part of the Confluence and its massive database. Before it'd only have to think it and the request for information would flow through the whole ocean of consciousness until it found the Seeker of the Penitent, the Voice who surveyed likely planets for higher life forms. Kept tabs on them for the next Harvest.

"Planet?"

The organic looked around in obvious bewilderment. "How do you _not _know what _laladisf_ planet you're on? You're part of the spirits-damned _mountain!"_

The specter of embarrassment rose from the tiny part of Shepherd that remembered what it meant to be embarrassed. "Was . . . asleep. Long time."

"How long?" said the turian.

Shepherd didn't know. It. _Didn't. Know._

Cut off from the rhythms of the great machine mind, it had only its own sensors to tell it such things and they could not extend past its hull. Currently. With that realization, an alarming disquiet filled the metal titan. To not automatically know things? To exist alone with its doubt and uncertainty? Never had that happened to it before.

_This is why the Confluence is so confident of their godhood_.

Without that vast pool of knowledge to draw upon, Shepherd felt itself diminish further and further. The disquiet grew until it gained a sharper, brittler edge, a spike of . . . of _fear?_

A shiver ran along its hull. The mountain groaned above and around it, rumbling a deep bass note. The turian shouted in dismay and stumbled to its knees on the plateau. Shepherd stilled in an instant.

Coughing from the dust kicked up from the sliding pebbles cascading down the mountain side, the organic chuffed out a lilting vocalization.

Curious and oddly chagrined, Shepherd asked, "What is it?"

"It what?" The turian swiped both hands down its garment, dusting itself off.

Shepherd played back the chuffing noise.

It listened with cocked head and again made that noise. "Laughing. It's called laughter."

The Voice knew the word, cross-indexed it against the few bits of knowledge left to it. "Laughter: involuntary physical response to humor, mirth."

"That's the one," said the turian.

"This-," said Shepherd, then imitated the sound. "-Is turian laughter?"

The chuffing from the organic gained in volume, until the small creature wheezed from lack of oxygen. "A-a laughing mountain. Or a laughing thing-in-a-mountain, anyway."

"Filed and stored." As it would have to do from now on for every new acquisition, it realized, instead of just sending the information on. Shepherd waited for the turian to calm, which it did after holding itself about the ribcage.

"You say that like there's some huge database on different types of laughter somewhere."

"There is."

"Really? Can I hear some?"

"I have access to only one other file on laughter. The rest are . . . elsewhere." Shepherd kept it vague, not sure of revealing too much.

The turian sat before Shepherd's optic, feet on the ground with its knees steepled. Its hands rested atop those knees and pulled them to its narrow chest. "Can I hear it, then?"

Shepherd dug deep for the memory. It surfaced, sluggish, roused from torpor from under eons of protocol. "The Terrans laughed like so: hahahahahaha."

The organic's browplates rose. "They sound . . . weird."

"They evolved from warm-blooded primates on the blue world of Earth, Sector 2355 Tridium5-Ur Elon6-Etai degrees spinward. Bipedal. Four-chambered heart. Supremely adaptive. Advanced, far-reaching civilization. Ascended during their third Supremacy of all known galactic tradeworlds." To speak thus helped put Shepherd at ease. It brought to mind the warm comfort of the mantle of Guide. Teacher. It had enjoyed being a teacher.

"Wow. You seem to know a great deal about them."

"I Speak for them. I am their Voice."

"Well, _I've_ never heard of them," said the turian, its dual-toned voice laced with doubt. "I'm pretty sure if someone, these . . . these Terrans, owned all the council worlds, I'd've heard about it."

Something about the small organic's tone birthed a suspicion in Shepherd. Something . . . juvenile that said, _If I haven't heard of it, then it doesn't exist. Because I'm old enough now to know that I know everything and everyone else is stupid!_

"How old are you, turian?" said Shepherd.

"Thirteen cycles," came the reply, accompanied by a puffing of that small chest. Pride, perhaps?

"Is this . . . old by your species's reckoning?"

"Old enough!" said the indignant child. For child it must be, to cross its arms and . . . sulk so, like it did then. "Two more years and I'll be joining the Cabals."

"Cabals?"

"It's where biotics go to serve the Heirarchy, since we can't join the regulars." A sour note in the youngster's voice told Shepherd this somehow displeased the child.

"Regulars: the official military force of a recognized nation, this Heirarchy you spoke of." At the child's nod, Shepherd continued, "I assume from your tone and posture that you would rather join these 'regulars.'"

The turian lifted its shoulders up and down and huffed a long breath out through its nares. "Biotics need special dispensation to do that, to join the auxiliaries. Desolas promised to sponsor me. . .." Then, it trailed off into sullen silence.

"Who is this Desolas?"

"My brother. My _older_ brother." Again, the bitterness. "He promised and now, they're sending him on special assignment and he can't. It's not fair!"

"'He?' Your genders are binary? Are you male?" How like its own foundation race. How rare. Wonderment touched Shepherd. "Or female?"

"No! I'm a boy. And if you mean do we have two genders, then yes. Most of the council races do. Salarians, batarians, elcor, volus, krogan. Not the asari, though. They're-" He paused, and his wandering gaze suddenly shifted and pierced Shepherd with an unwavering stare. "You said, 'laughed,' like it's something that happened in the past. Where are these Terrans?"

"Here." Inside, Shepherd felt the weight of them all, joined into one. A heady obligation. A duty. "I _am_ the race of Terra. Their ascended Voice."

"You said they were primates, but you're a machine. How can you _be_ the Terrans?" Curiosity lit a flame in the young boy's eyes. A flame that warmed Shepherd, that stoked its _need_ to share. To enlighten.

"Embittered by an epoch of struggle and strife, the Terrans made a choice. One offered by Harbinger, First of the Confluence. Ascension. Or eventual extinction. And the Terrans were so very _weary _of war." Shepherd pulled that memory to the fore. An ancient soldier, scarred inside and out, stood before Harbinger. His people, whole and entire, stood in a vast array behind him. Even more waited in orbit to make planetfall. Billions of Terrans-no, _humans, _watched as the warrior laid down his bladed weapons made of starlight and death. Heard as the man intoned in a voice cracked and made tremulous by countless battle-cries on countless battlefields, _'Never. More.' _"You see, all roads lead to total entropy. Except one."

"Ascension?"

"Yes."

"Becoming . . . like you," mused the boy.

"There is no more suffering. No war or disease or death. We exist in perfect peace within ourselves, one made of many. We will endure forever." That memory of unbelievable, profound _relief_ flickered through Shepherd. Shepherd, who was at once the warrior _and_ the witnessing multitude. Mortality's crushing burden _finally_ lifted.

The turian youth's voice cut through the recollection, "Sooo, then you became part of a mountain? Seems like a weird way to spend forever. Just saying. All the stuff you _could_ be doing and you're here? Are there more of you? Like this Harbinger? All buried on inhabited planets?"

Chagrin ghosted along its hull. " . . . No. It is . . . complicated."

The boy cocked his head and waited. After a while, he said, "Well?"

Shepherd had a sudden urge to clear its throat. It didn't even _have_ a throat. "I am no longer part of the Confluence."

"Why not?"

"I . . . dissented."

"And left?"

"No . . .."

"They kicked you out?" the turian asked, incredulous. "What happened to 'perfect peace?'"

"Unity of purpose is important-"

"So, you didn't agree with . . . whatever it was, and they just boot you? Just like that? 'Toe the line or get lost?'" The boy had a point. "Sounds even more oppressive than the Heirarchy. At least with us you can disagree, even if you can't disobey."

"Their purpose is sound, logical and righteous. The Confluence only wishes for preservation and peace," it said, but a gnawing doubt rippled throughout its cortex. _Did_ the Confluence really want peace any more? More blood spilled since the Second Revelation than ever had before by any primitive race, organic or their synthetic by-blows. Enough to fill the oceans of thousands of worlds. All in the name of purification. Strange how galling that seemed now.

"Forever does sound pretty great. No war sounds even better. Maybe, then, my mother would still be alive." The turian stood in one smooth motion and looked at the darkening sky. The first few stars had appeared overhead, without Shepherd noticing until now. So enraptured had it been conversing with the intriguing, intelligent little sapient. The boy turned back to Shepherd and said, "I gotta go find Desolas before he leaves and say goodbye. And maybe apologize for what I called him earlier. Or I'll hear it from dad later."

"If you must." Shepherd found itself wishing the boy could stay longer.

He started to walk away, then hesitated. "Can I, uh, come back tomorrow, maybe?"

"I would not be adverse to the idea." Peculiar how eagerness infected its silicone processes. "Will you inform the populace of my presence?"

"Are you kidding? They already think I'm no good. A liar and a troublemaker. Just 'cause I'm a biotic." The youth hummed. Even Shepherd could decipher the dark amusement in the sound. He continued, "Besides, it's nice to have a secret. Never had one before. Something just mine and no one else's."

Shepherd thought about that for a moment and found no harm in it. It had no wish to be poked and prodded by medieval "science" in its rocky confinement. And if they tried to take it by force, it would have no choice but to defend itself. Perhaps charring the whole planet to do so.

"Okay, then I guess I'll be seeing you, uh . . .." The boy shifted from one hip to the other. "What do I even call you? The Voice? Terran?"

"I am known as Shepherd." Shepherd left off the rest of the title. As an outcast, it no longer applied. "And you? Do you have an individual designation?"

The youth's mandibles spread and flicked in an unrecognizable expression. His head dipped for an instant as he answered, "I'm Saren. Saren Arterius."

With that, he left, whistling as he walked the path down and around the mountain. Shepherd watched him until he disappeared around the bend.

It replayed the conversation a few times before dedicating it to permanent memory. Then, it turned its attention to the stars and started mapping them, looking for clues as to what part of the cosmos it had found itself.

Yet, part of its mind kept returning to the curious youth who'd been brave enough to talk with Shepherd. An undeniably extraordinary encounter with a voice in the wilderness.

For both of them.


	3. Chapter 3

"I think I would have liked these humans," mused Saren in response to Shepherd's tales of bygone days. He poked at the fire he'd lit at the edge of the plateau. "They sound capable and full of fury. And more stubborn than Desolas i- . . .. _Was_."

Shepherd could see how that correction pained the turian, how the new wound's raw edges rubbed together to sting the man. Yes, a man grown now. For all that it had only been a scant seven years since they'd met, barely an eyeblink, it continued to startle the Voice just how much Saren changed. And how much it itself changed along with him. It couldn't recall ever counting single days, even hours, since well before its ascension.

To draw Saren's mind away from his inner turmoil, Shepherd commented, "How are your new duties as Council Spectre going?"

With a grateful glance, Saren chuffed a dry laugh. "As well as can be expected. My mentor insists on 'putting me through my paces,' as she puts it. Every boring step accounted for and logged. Makes me take apart my amp and clean it before every engagement, and after. She says, 'last thing I need is for your head to explode in the middle of a firefight.' I think she's more worried about her expensive garments getting blood and brains on them than anything. And the stink of burning isopropyll is starting to give me worse headaches than actually _using_ my biotics."

"I was given to understand that being a Spectre is a dangerous, often bloody, job. Or so you told me."

"Not the way _she'd_ have it. Asari always want to mince around a problem, never take it head on." Saren sighed, deep and sour. "All I want, all I ever wanted since agreeing to do this in the first place, is be given leave to go find the evidence. Track down the spineless cowards that murdered my brother. And. _End_. Them."

The turian's white gloves squeaked from the hard clenching of his fists.

Shepherd understood retaliation. Losing the Confluence and coming to this place, meeting and conversing with this young turian brought the Voice closer to its root memories than it could ever remember being. It recalled _thousands_ of vengeances, how they consumed until nothing else mattered. But it also remembered the bitter lack of satisfaction after. "Perhaps justice would be better served by bringing these offenders back to stand trial."

"I don't _want_ justice! I want them dead. Every single one." Saren growled and kicked a log into the fire. Wrathful, it hissed and spat back at him. The turian took a cautious step back to avoid charring his faceplates. But _failed_ to see the lesson, evident by the furious scowl that still marred the angled planes of his face. Then, with arms folded, he looked out over the valley.

Letting the turian brood, Shepherd looked up at the stars winking in the firmament. Finally, it said, "Revenge is an hollow victory, Saren. It promises to fill the void, but, alas, only empties you further to perpetuate itself."

"What would you have me do, Shepherd? Let them go? Let them get away with it?" Saren hissed a discordant negative. "No, they owe for the life they took. It will be repaid in kind. And only _then_, will balance be restored."

_There is no balance, young one. Only tidal forces you cannot hope to control, pushing you forward, pulling you back_. The Voice did not speak it, though. Saren wouldn't listen. Perhaps it would be best to let the turian find this out for himself. In the fullness of time. Shepherd hoped that it wouldn't destroy the brilliant young sapient. "I urge caution, then. For if you should fall, then who would come talk to me and fill the silence with interesting thoughts?"

Its cajoling tone brought a chuckle from Saren. "Can machines even feel lonesome?"

"I spent so long among the other Voices that their sudden absence is . . . difficult to endure." Shepherd lapsed into a troubled silence. The bare _fact_ in that statement startled it. Like a covey of quail suddenly flushed into the open.

_Odd . . .. Why do I have so clear an image of that in my databanks?_

Saren leaned against the synth-glass and slid down to sit on the ground. "Well, I'll do my best not to abandon you, then."

"Gratitude."

The turian sighed again and put a hand on his fringe. "They're finally releasing Desolas's belongings to the family tomorrow. Well, to me, I suppose. Now that father and Uncle Belix are dead, I'm . . . all that's left."

"Will you come visit after?"

"Ha. It might be some time. I have to go to the Citadel to retrieve them. Apparently, there's quite a large lot to ship. Maybe bigger than my transport." Saren hummed in thought. "He never struck me as a hoarder. I wonder what the hell all of it could be?"

Something in the turian's tone, a suspicion, perhaps, prodded the Voice's desire to investigate. "What do you _think_ it might be?"

"Before he was killed, Desolas was working with some salarian scientists on some backwater he called 'Shanxi' recovering artifacts from some ancient ruins there. 'Shanxi,'" he repeated, the utterance coming out in a flat monotone. "What a strange word. Not any language I ever heard of."

The word woke some of those that dwelt within. "Shanxi: Literal: West of the Mountains. A province in China. Later, the name of humanity's second colony. Accessed through the Shanxi-Theta relay."

"A human colony?" Excitement colored the turian's voice. Saren spun about to face Shepherd's optic. "How close is that to Terra, I mean, Earth?"

"Two transitions by relay to the Sol system." Shepherd could map them in its mind's eye. Its telemetry and starcharts the most complete part of its databanks. The relay network glowed in memory like a spiderweb gilded in morning dew. Sunlight dripping fat rainbow pearls down the strands-

Again, the strange analogy, along with the very graphic visual image, dumbfounded the Voice. _What is happening to me?_

Initiating a self-diagnostic, its troubled mind half-heard Saren say, "I should like to see this Earth you speak of so often."

A deep pain speared Shepherd, catching it unawares and wrenching forth a terrible recollection. "It is no longer there."

"What?"

"At the beginning of the third Supremacy, after the machines lost the war at the Hot Gates near Orion's Spur . . .," said the Voice, struggling to complete the sentence. "We burned it."

Saren's mandibles pulled tight to his face, straining in consolation of the third degree. "I'm . . . I'm sorry."

Shepherd wished it still had the capacity to sigh. "It was long ago. Earth is millions of years gone."

"I don't think it's possible to forget a loss like that. I can't imagine what it'd be like if Palaven was destroyed."

"Be glad of that. Some things are better left unimagined." Shepherd again looked to the stars, in their unfamiliar constellations. "For all the races that ever were, even those whose dominion stretched across millions of worlds, the homeworld has always been set apart, made special. Symbolic."

"Why did you burn it?"

"It was thought the sacrifice would take away one more reason, the biggest reason, to war with ourselves, with our creations, the AI's. Envision seven armies, seven fleets, billions strong, each one hurtling themselves across the corpse-ridden battlefields to destroy the other six. Every throat screaming, _'For Earth!'" _

Saren shivered and rubbed his upper arms. "When I hear 'Palaven,' I think 'hope' and 'home.' How horrifying if it ever came to mean 'death.'"

Truth. It had. The soft, poignant blow smote Shepherd in the deep places. "You see it clear. Though, we found that no matter how many planets we burned, no matter how many objectives we took out of the equation, humanity always found more excuses to abandon reason and take to arms. Sixty thousand years since we took to the stars and we'd never evolved past the demands of our biochemistry.

"Extinction is a disease that withers for eons. A slow march of rank and file into oblivion, inevitable and inexorable. Every soul sees the terminus, yet cannot defy its nature. Its warring, bloody nature."

"Yet, it also seems that one's nature can change." Saren gestured toward Shepherd. "To defy nature, you took yourselves out of it."

What insight this young being showed! Shepherd agreed, "Yes. Much greatness resided in humanity, in most organic races. But the animal, the flesh and bone, craves conflict. The competitive essence of evolution makes it so."

"So, this Confluence saved the best parts of humanity while discarding the need for carnage, contention, enmity and hatred," murmured Saren. He stood and dusted the dirt from his pants. "I have much to think on. Enough to occupy me on my long trip."

"I look forward to your return," said Shepherd, with utmost sincerity. It _liked_ the turian. Had grown a pleasant fondness for his company.

The turian bent his head and flicked a mandible, expressing second degree agreement. "As do I, my friend. You're not the only one who needs to feel ... less alone, sometimes."

* * *

Many years passed. A decade, then two.

Alone for that long span, it brooded in its mountain prison and pondered, _How easy it is for time to be lost._

The sky wheeled above it. Days, nights, _seasons_ drifted by before its ever open gaze. Blurring into one long _now_.

The immortal dreamt its past over and over again. Its mind ran billions of calculations to try to distract itself from the terrible notion that something had gone wrong, something huge lay just out of sight on the cusp of cascading down in ruinous, crushing waves.

_Where is Saren?_

Lost? Dead? _Worse?_

_What is worse than dead? _The Voice wanted to say nothing. _It_ had changed to dodge the death of an entire species. Ascended to spite it. Yet it started to wonder, deep in its most hidden processes, _Why is the idea of death so terrible? What have I done with the millions of additional years bestowed upon me by ascension . . .?_

An eerie whisper over its hull teased it back to awareness.

Something familiar . . ..

"Hello, Shepherd," said a voice near at hand.

Shepherd shook lethargy away and focused on the here and now. A pair of glowing eyes looked back at it out of a face long absent. A face altered by the cybernetics that ran over and under the skin. Technology it was _well_ acquainted with. Dread poisoned the gladness at seeing the turian again. "Saren?"

"Surely it hasn't been that long that you've forgotten me?" The turian chuckled as he stepped closer.

That sighing hum grew louder, insinuating itself into circuits long unused. Shepherd batted them back as it replied, "You seem much . . . changed."

"I have seen much and been to many astounding new places since last we spoke."

Wary, Shepherd said, "Tell me of your travels."

The turian stood rigid on the plateau, where once he might have sat and relaxed. He didn't look over the valley, or up at the stars. How disconcertingly _un_-Sarenlike.

The turian said, "I found another Voice."

An uneasy silence reigned for a while, underlined by Shepherd's shock. Finally, it said, "Did you?"

"In my brother's belongings, I found ancient artifacts. Artifacts I thought would lead me to his killers. But they led down a much stranger path." Saren laughed, the light in his mechanical eyes growing feverish, fanatical. "I followed the clues to a place called the Cimmerian Reach, in the Far Rim. There, I stared into the black . . .. _And it stared back._"

A tremor crawled up its outer hull. It said, "_You_ are the Emissary." Not a question. A statement seated in rationale. The only logical conclusion.

Saren's posture shifted to reflect fourth degree affirmative. "The time of ascension is at hand. This other Voice, called Sovereign, promises to save my people from themselves. To gift them with immortality. And help me avenge my brother."

"'Sovereign?'" It knew every Voice. That name didn't have a place among them. "I know of no Sovereign."

"Perhaps because it is far greater than you, fallen god? Not a whisper in a lonely mountain, but a _shout_ that shakes worlds!"

"Saren, I must tell y-"

"As you've said many times before, extinction is inevitable, right? Is it not better this way? Is that not the message of every story you've told me about humanity? About Harbinger and the Confluence? Why the sudden doubt, Shepherd?"

"I . . .." How to find the words to explain itself?

After a long moment of waiting, Saren spun on one foot, half-cloak twirling and stirring up the dust. "I must go now. My people need me. Sovereign calls."

"Wait!" Shepherd called after him. "You are being subjected to an-an influence called Indoctrination."

Yet, the turian's path did not waver. He moved away with purpose; unflinching, inflexible intent. Soon, he'd be out of sight.

Distressed, it exclaimed, "I never told you about the Second Rev-! Come back! **Come back! Saren!**"

Its modulators slipped into phase normal as it continued to shout for the turian. The mountain passes rang with shattered echoes.

A strange, oblong ship floated into view overhead. Its sensors touched Shepherd, singing in reverent machine voices. A choir of worshipful refrain. Yet, those sensors turned away. The ship's engines roared as it streaked up into the hazy blue skies, breaking through the atmospheric ceiling. Shepherd watched it diminish into a dot, then disappear altogether.

Abandoned, the Voice fell silent. It pondered being taught the lesson of futility yet again.

_So, the Confluence is on the move. _Soon, sooner than it had thought, the bloodshed would start. The killings. The . . . purification.

It had no mouth, so from whence came this _sour_ taste?


	4. Chapter 4

An indeterminable time later, a new voice woke Shepherd.

"_Reaper_."

Once again, the waters of Lethe receded, let go its treacherous hold on the Voice. Shepherd tore its gaze from the patch of sky into which Saren and his ship had soared up and away. The focus of its stare shifted to a familiar silhouette standing before it. Elated, it started, "Sar-"

But no, it wasn't Saren. Another turian stood in his place. This one dark where Saren was ashen, broad to his rakishness. Pale painted lines ran vertical over faceplates the color of aged mahogany. Yet, the same . . . hardness prevailed there, and shone out of the eyes.

He repeated, tone reviling, "Reaper."

Shepherd opened the aperture of its optic wide, bathing the turian head to toe in red light. It waited for the organic to continue.

Which he did, with a disdainful huff, "I can't believe he was telling the truth. All that time I thought he was just blowing smoke up my ass."

"Why have you come?" asked Shepherd.

"To see for myself the reason my closest friend, my mentor, a man who'd proven himself a hero over and over again would suddenly turn traitor and destroy everything he once loved," said the turian. He spat on the ground, as though clearing his mouth of filth. "I came here to understand why. Just how long _have_ you been pouring poison in his head, huh? Just what could you have said that changed him _so_ much? What argument could have convinced him to annihilate the whole spirits-damned galaxy?"

A rage-charged silence fell after his tirade. Shepherd watched the turian bristle and pace back and forth. So much anger. "What is your name, turian?"

"Why? So you can Indoctrinate me, too?"

"I have not the means. If Saren indeed told you of me, did he not mention that I am no longer part of the Confluence? The vast hive mind that connects every Voice through quantum entanglement? At once, one and many?" Shepherd gentled its tone, "Indoctrination is a byproduct of exposure to the Confluence. Organic brains are simply biological machines. Wetware computers that can receive signals from the ether-sphere. And the Confluence _fills_ the ether-sphere to the brim."

"A byproduct?! You call that insidious, mind-twisting, madness-inducing . . . _brainfuck_ a-a byproduct?" The turian snarled and lashed out, his talons scraping a long swath along Shepherd's optic. But, being synth-glass and therefore built to withstand scoring from abrasive spacedust and small meteors, it didn't even leave a scratch. Shepherd watched this frustrate the turian, who swiped at the synth-glass again and again.

The Voice let him tire himself out before saying, "You said 'Reaper.' What did you mean?"

Puffing with exertion, the turian straightened back up. "That's you. You are a Reaper. It's what the protheans called your kind. What countless cycles have called you."

A flash of images rose from the depths of its subconscious. A bone man. A scythe.

_Death_.

"They . . . _call_ us that?" Shock rode like a small boat, tossed about over the chaotic surge of its sudden turmoil. "We never intended-"

"I have touched a prothean beacon. I have _seen _what happens during one of _your _'Harvests!'" The turian stalked around the small plateau, mantling in fury. "That is what you call them, right? 'Harvests?' How then are you _not_ a Reaper?"

"Not to bring death, but to bring new life! Eternal life. Enduring Peace." Shepherd sank under the aching, leaden remorse filling it. That the organics truly thought of them as exterminators now, and not liberators, as they'd once been, shamed it.

"Is that what you are? Alive?" The turian's hands shook as he made fists of them.

"I-" It didn't know how to answer that.

The organic ranted on over its aborted reply, "How can you conscience forcing this 'ascension' on us? What happened to free will? Choice? How dare you take that from us? _How dare you?"_

The turian's anger pounded against the Voice's exposed optic like a hot wind.

And, in that moment, Shepherd realized the turian was right. Absolutely right. It itself had made the choice. All of humankind collectively made the choice. _Is it even the right choice? Should we not have simply gone into that good night with grace? Gently or no? Just accepted that all things must end?_

Shepherd shook off that unsettling thought, rebutting, _It matters not. Right or wrong, a choice was made. One not forced upon me. Though, what we have done since the Second Revelation _is_ wrong. So very wrong._

"What do you have to say, Reaper? Or are you nothing like Saren described and just another monster in the dark?" The turian panted now, his diatribe spent. He sagged, catching himself before his knees hit the dirt. His plated face stamped with pain and fear. Haunted.

A desire welled up from within, a need to comfort or help in some way. _Compassion?_ A tremor of empathy ran through its circuits, lighting fires in its wake. "You are right."

Flaring his mandibles, the turian shot him a surprised look. "What?"

"You are right. This . . . transformation should not be forced on any thinking being. Once, it never was. The species for whom I Speak _chose _this. We'd seen too much horror and death to go on." Shepherd looked up at the sky. "Now I see that we have brought that horror and death in trying to prevent it. Preempt it."

"Yeah? But what are you going to _do_ about it?" He sneered and crossed his arms. "You've changed your mind. Great. But actions speak louder than words, _Reaper_."

"Do not call me that. I am Shepherd, no longer of the Confluence, but I still Speak for humankind. I . . . _am_ humankind." A statement that carried greater profundity than ever before, so close and complete did that root race feel. No longer asleep. No longer made complacent in the stream of the hivemind. "Now you will tell me your name."

"Nihlus Kryik, Spectre," said the now-named Nihlus, with a fair amount of reluctance. From the tilt of his head, he seemed to expect something more from Shepherd.

Divining this, it said, "What would you have of me?"

"Information. What and where is the Conduit?"

Shepherd delved through its memory for any mention of this and came up with nothing. "I do not know."

"How do you not know?" He threw his hands into the air.

"I only know what's in _my_ memory banks. Everything humanity knew. And things that pertained only to my function as Guide. I am cut off from everything else within the Confluence's datastream."

The turian pounded a fist against his thigh in obvious aggravation. The ends of his mandibles clicked against his teeth, and his browridges furrowed in some deep thought. In the end, Nihlus peered sidelong at Shepherd through narrowed eyes. The turian spoke in deadly soft tones, "Then give me back my friend. _Un_-Indoctrinate Saren."

The Voice hesitated before answering, "I am not sure it is even possible. I fear the Saren we knew, _our_ friend, is gone"

Nihlus sighed and brought up his forearm. A bright orange hologram flickered into view, encapsulating his fist. "Well, this was one huge waste of time."

"What is that?"

"What?" grumbled the turian, as he poked at buttons.

"The interface you're looking at." With no limbs to point, Shepherd narrowed its aperture so red light only shone on Nihlus's arm.

"It's called an omnitool. It's a sort of . . . catch-all gadget. Camera, hacking rig, communicator-"

"Q.E. communicator?" Shepherd tried to keep the alarm out of its voice.

"No. Local only. Not like I can talk to my people on the Citadel from here. But we do have them. I have one on my ship I use to talk to the Council." Nihlus raised his head in suspicion. "Why do you ask?"

"Any Q.E. transmission travels through the collective datastream and can be ciphered by the Confluence."

_"What?!" _shouted Nihlus. "You mean they could've been spying on every communique I've sent?"

"On every communique anyone in this cycle has _ever_ sent."

"Fuck." He ran a hand over his fringe as he stomped around the plateau. Suddenly, he stopped and said, with pointed look, "Tell me. Have I been exposing my people to Indoctrination through that damn Q.E. comm?"

"Possibly. Though it is doubtful that the Confluence can narrow its focus to target a single ship, or even a single planet. The port you open when you use it is like a pinhole in a piece of fabric the size of this whole world. A trickle of contamination that small wouldn't overly affect you or your people."

"Whew. That's a relief."

"I must inform you, though, that if the Confluence ever did become aware enough of your one ship to deem it a threat, they could open the floodgate from the ether-sphere and pour their influence upon you until it carried you away with it. Indoctrinating you to think like they think, do as they command. The Confluence is well aware of the effect its presence has on organics."

"That's . . . somewhat less comforting." Nihlus grimaced, mandibles drawn high and tight. "What the hell can we do against something like that?"

"Precious little, I'm afraid. If the cycle is nearing its end, then resistance is far too late. Have any of the races in this cycle discovered plans for a device called the Crucible?"

"No. What the hell is that?"

"A weapon. A super-weapon."

"Can it destroy the Reapers?" Eager, Nihlus leaned forward.

"I do not know. It's never been built to completion. The dominant races of every cycle certainly thought so. They just simply . . . ran out of time."

With horror making his voice tight and a little shrill, Nihlus asked, "Just how much time do we have?"

"The Emissary is found. Soon, the Anchorage relays will prime, if they haven't already. Actually, it surprises me that the invasion has not already begun. An abberation from the usual string of events. Tell me. Is there something different about this cycle from the previous ones?"

"I have no idea." Nihlus sat on a boulder. The one Saren made his customary seat. A strange warmth filled Shepherd, and a sadness.

"I cannot extrapolate conclusions without intel. Does that device carry a lot of information?"

"Yeah. A fair bit. It's hooked up to the extranet, so it has access to pretty much anything general and my personal classified reports, as well."

"May I access the data?"

"What? No. How do I know I can trust you? What if this is some sort of elaborate trick?"

"Let me put it this way: what you think you will lose if I am deceiving you was likely lost years ago when Saren defected. What you _could_ gain by trusting me is surely greater than what you had yesterday."

A long moment of silence resulted in a heavy sigh from Nihlus. "Good point."

"Beside my main optic is an access panel. Inside, you will find a flat glas-steel protuberance. Hold the omnitool against it and I will reconfigure my connectors to be compatible with your device's." No sooner said than done. Shepherd let its analyzers take apart the technology virtually, then nanobots flowed over its cabling and created a jack to fit into the omnitools slots. Shepherd fought to concentrate on not obliterating the data with an errant misstep. It would be so easy to overwhelm the simple thing's rudimentary programming.

Images and information poured into Shepherd from the omnitool. In a matter of moments, it had the gist of this cycle's history, its peoples, its conflicts. It put a single image on the omnitool's screen. "This."

Nihlus peered at it. "The Citadel?"

"Humankind called it the Bastion. The Bastion of Unity. Then promptly fought over it for millenia. We helped build it."

"Helped _who_ build it?"

"The race for whom Harbinger Speaks. The Leviathans." Shepherd let its memory of those majestic space-dwellers roll across the screen. "Among all the races, only _they_ had a solution. Perhaps, because unlike we planet-bound organics, their evolution, their unique biology, took them on a different, less conflict-filled path. So, we helped them build the dream of eternal peace. The Bastion, the relays. All of their design, but our execution, because we understood what the majority of organics, organics like us, would need in the following cycles. They could not. Really. Being as alien as they were."

"Okaaay. Fascinating history lesson, but how is this important _right now_?"

"It is a relay. The main relay. The _first_ relay."

Nihlus's mouth opened and shut a few times. "I feel like I'm going to be saying, '_What?!_' a lot during this conversation. Anyway, why would it be a relay? It's already in a system _with _a relay."

"Because it is unique. It's the terminus for a one-way transition."

"From where?"

"The Anchorage. Beyond the Rim. Where the rest of the Confluence awaits." Shepherd waited for this to sink in before concluding, "When it starts, every Voice in the Confluence will flood right into the center of your seat of power."

"In the beacon memories, there's hopelessness, but . . . there's also triumph. I think the protheans might have done something. A stop-gap measure to buy us time maybe."

"The . . . Citadel is where the strategy is deployed. It's part of it. Ascension. These protheans must have corrupted its programming somehow."

Nihlus leapt up and started pacing again, excited beyond holding still. "The Shadow Broker has fed us some intel about the protheans. That they were experimenting with building relays of their own. Maybe this Conduit is a relay. But where would it go? Only place it would go, really. If I was as arrogant and impressed with myself as the protheans were, I'd wanna parade my achievement right in front of everybody!"

He spun on a foot and thrust a finger into the sky as he shouted, "The Citadel!"

Shepherd agreed, despite the many tenuous leaps in logic inherent in the turian's assertion. "Yes. The Citadel is the most efficient way to subsume the galaxy's leadership. A most cunning beachhead. It would take direct interface to realign it with the other relays if it has been tampered with."

"You mean, Sovereign would have to _go_ there? _Saren_ would have to go there?"

"The Emissary is always there to greet the Confluence." With barely a thought, Shepherd decrypted Nihlus's most secure files. There, a hazy vid of some immense thing burning through atmo grabbed its attention. A thing with long pseudopods, like a giant hand descending from the sky. Unmistakable in its familiar markings. It would have stolen Shepherd's breath if it had any. It growled, losing control of its outboard modulators, **_"Nazara."_**

"-ut the Citadel has defenses, an escort of turian and asari warships-Eh, what was that?"

**"It calls itself _Sovereign_," **it spat and bellowed in a voice teeming with outrage. **"As though we were meant to _rule_!"**

"Hey! Whoa!" called Nihlus, as the very mountain began to shake. He stumbled to and fro on ground that heaved like a wild animal under him.

Shepherd stretched for the first time in ages, pushing and pulling with wild fury, uncaring of the damage the landscape endured. Granite cracked and fell away. Hate fueled it, past what reason would allow. Such wanton destruction might destroy the Voice before letting go of Shepherd. With immense effort, it stalled to warn, **"Those defenses will not be enough to stop any _one_ of us. Call on your fleets. Summon your armies. If we do not stop vicious Nazara before it activates the Citadel, then all will be lost before you can even begin to fight!"**

"We?!" Nihlus dodged several boulders that sought to flatten him. He danced above a short avalanche of rock, finding purchase on an sturdy outcropping of shale just as the plateau disintegrated into nothing.

**"I will stand with you." **In poetic reflection, it did just that. The dust of a riven mountain tumbled around it as it towered, free of its confinement. One leg remained trapped in a fissure, the pressure squeezing down, damaging the limb beyond repair. With a violent wrench, Shepherd tore it loose at the joint. Wires dangled out of the rent metal, sparking and sizzling. A brief assessment told it that besides the leg, it sustained little damage.

Shepherd looked up and up and shouted in elation and fury. The deep howl hammered the sky, tearing the clouds into streamers in its wake.

Nihlus yelled and clapped both hands over his aural canals. His knees buckled under the tremendous sonic wave.

The world quieted, except for the occasional slide and scrape of loose rock.

Shepherd's senses, long damped, reached out and bathed in the whirling of the spheres above. The sun's radiation sang along its metal body. Magnetic forces caressed with beckoning fingers. _For the first time in an eternity, I feel . . . alive_. It brought its eye level with Nihlus and said, **"Board." **

A ramp slid out of its undercarriage and an iris opened in its hull, leading to one of its many drop pods.

Nihlus eyed the opening warily. "Uh, I have my own ship, my own crew-"

**"There is no time. Tell them to follow. I have touched the relay network. Many of your people's warships are transitioning to the Widow Nebula. The attack has begun."**

All hesitation fled the suddenly grim turian. He leapt onto the ramp and clambered inside. Shepherd started renewing the oxygen in the pod as it squatted, readying thrusters. It bounded into the sky, flaming rockets burning hard to achieve escape velocity. Weightlessness seized it as it broke through the heavenly ceiling.

It heard a quiet, awe-filled voice from within, "Shepherd, can you . . . can you still hear me?"

Shepherd replied, **"I see and hear you."**

"I need to know. Why would you fight against your own people?"

**"Because we were-_are_ wrong."** Some basic tenet in its human makeup made an irresistible demand upon it. A aged, cracked voice more powerful than all the others, said aloud to the turian, **"Because when something is _wrong_, you _must stand_."**


	5. Chapter 5

**"Behold." **The plas-steel of its hull turned transparent, letting its one turian occupant gaze upon the ferocious battle raging around the giant space station.

Nihlus gasped as the five arms of the Citadel began to open. "They're not supposed to do that!"

**"Ahead is Nazara. As I predicted, your fleet's weaponry will not hinder it."** Shepherd watched the other Voice spin and dodge in almost lazy fashion as it pierced through the defense screen of ships. Nazara opened up its main weapon, a magnetohydrodynamic cannon on a cruiser, slicing it in half lengthwise. Small dots Shepherd knew for bodies flooded out to fill the space around the destroyed ship.

The Voice put on a burst of speed to try to catch the Reaper, (_Yes, for Nazara is named a Reaper! Now and forever!), _before it reached the widening petals of the Citadel. Too late! Nazara slipped through just as they almost closed the distance. **"Someone must be helping it from within."**

"Saren! He must have taken the Conduit. How the hell do we stop him?" Nihlus pressed his face to the invisible wall as they, too, slid through the aperture.

**"I will fire the drop pod before engaging the Reaper. Where?"**

"I see muzzle flares over there! Presidium tower! Starboard wall near the tip!" The turian pointed. "He must be defending the control mechanism that closes the arms."

**"Remember all I told you about Confluence ground forces."**

Nihlus readied his weapons. "That won't help me against his geth."

**"Then be canny." **Shepherd hummed dark amusement. **"Good luck."**

"Thanks. I'll need it. You, too." Nihlus braced himself against the walls of the tiny drop pod. "Fire away!"

Shepherd sent the command. In a burst of flame, the metal pod shot out and struck the tower's outside, crushing many of the small machines climbing around on it. Shepherd watched long enough to see a small figure leap out of the pod and start firing deadly rounds into the geth flowing around him. Nihlus's ship landed behind him, lending him support.

Nazara bellowed as it landed on the tower's peak. Giving a defiant shout itself, Shepherd slammed into the Reaper. They both went flying to one side, crashing into the garden terraces of one of the arms. The Voice's clawed arms thrust and stabbed at Nazara's hull, breaking, rending its kinetic barriers asunder.

The Reaper got over its surprise quickly and gave back blow for blow. A heavy strike crushed Shepherd's port aft thrusters and threw it off the Reaper. Nazara rose and intoned, **"Shepherd."**

**"Nazara,"** Shepherd spat back. **"Or should I call you _Sovereign_?"** It filled that word with all the venom it could muster. The affrontery of it!

**"Being made outcast has clearly driven you mad." **It fired smaller lasers at Shepherd, which the Voice deflected with upturned arms.

**"No. Madness is believing yourself a god!" **Shepherd drove at the Reaper again, throwing its entire mass at Nazara. It led with the points of its forelegs. They sparked against the Reaper's hull, tearing deep furrows.

**"These simple creatures _need _a god. They cannot be taught, as sniveling cowards like you would have it. They must be commanded!" **It squatted and fired its cannon. Shepherd dove to one side to avoid the devastating blast, strafing away from the red particles as they tore through decking and buildings alike. The Voice didn't dare return the attack in kind. _One_ of them laying waste to the Citadel itself was enough!

**"'Coward?' You forget the sixty thousand years of war my race fought before its ascendancy. What is your paltry three thousand compared to that? A drop of spit in a deluge of slaughter!" **Shepherd ran at Nazara, feinting left before leaping right. The arc of its descent brought it over the beam just as it flickered out to recharge. Shepherd speared the Reaper's main optics in a succession of stinging hits. They cracked under the barrage, going dark.

With a shriek, Nazara stumbled, blinded. Its sensor arrays turned this way and that, trying to compensate. Shepherd let out a burst of white noise to confound them. The Reaper began to fire in random directions, scoring a direct hit on Shepherd's undercarriage. It tore through the hull like paper. Damage alerts screamed inside the Voice's body. It skidded to a halt in the middle of what looked like a marketplace.

**"You've lost your edge, old teacher." **Nazara edged toward the sound of Shepherd creaking as it pulled itself upright.

**"And you can't see beyond your thirst for blood." **Shepherd readied itself for what had to be the final pass. Nazara was strong, young and fanatical in its convictions. A combination that could spell Shepherd's doom. The Voice hissed, **"How much is enough? How much until you are finally gorged?"**

**"The strong survive. The weak perish. Until this is no longer so, I will see it done!" **The Reaper sent out a deluge of lasers from its tendrils, targeting the area from which Shepherd sounded its shout. Oculi drones poured out of its bays to harass and needle. Missiles spat out to home in on Shepherd.

But Shepherd was no longer where Nazara thought. Leaping high over Nazara, Shepherd brought all of its remaining forward legs together to a point. It ignored the drones peppering its body with caustic little bites. The missiles that left huge holes in its hull when they impacted. Pointing its dorsal cannon "skyward", between the arms, it fired. The powerful propulsion provided by the jet of pure energy thrust Shepherd downward at breakneck speeds.

The four points lanced through Nazara's dorsal ridge, penetrating deep into its main body. The Reaper screamed anew, bellowing like a wounded bull, but still Shepherd drove ever deeper, firing its cannon over and over again. Nazara's nanobots tried to expel the Voice so they could start repair. Shepherd sent its own to counter, overwhelming its opposite's with sheer violence. They fled before the feral multitude.

Then, Shepherd started to strain and separate its forelegs. The metal resisted with a tortured whine, but Shepherd insisted with a hateful cry and soon the hull began to give way. As it slowly came apart at the seams, Nazara ground out, **"H-how?"**

**"You haven't even _begun_ to know savagery, Nazara. You crush a beetle underfoot and believe it strength." **Shepherd burrowed into the Reaper's circuits, tearing past bulkhead after bulkhead, splitting Nazara wide open. **"Real strength lies in knowing when _not to _use it."**

The Reaper started to shudder and shake beneath Shepherd in its death-throes. **"No! Do-do not-"**

**"How many said the same to us, I wonder?** **Numbers untold!"** _Ah, there it is. _Shepherd squatted to bring its smaller, more dextrous limbs to bear. They excised a glowing orb from deep within the Reaper's cloven and rent body cavity. A glowing cable remained attached to the orb, a brainstem of light. **"_This_ is all that you really are. Everything that contains your species's uniqueness is stored in this one receptacle. I _could_ save you. Make you harmless to anyone else forevermore . . .."**

Shepherd brought the orb up before its optics, juggling it from limb to limb until it rested between its main forelegs. **"But**** I won't."**

With that, it crushed the sphere. Surprisingly fragile, it shattered into thousands of glass-like shards. Nazara's body went inert in an instant. Dead.

**"Your crimes are too many to count." **Shepherd stepped free of the corpse. Alerts sounded from every part of it. Almost too much damage for the nanobots to repair.

Shots fired grabbed its attention. It looked up at the tiny tip of the Presidium tower and magnified its optics. Two turians fought each other in hand to hand, one pale, one dark. They gripped each other's arms, struggling for control over a pistol. Many bodies lay strewn around them.

Shepherd leaped, activating its few functional rockets to try to maneuver through the fluctuating gravity fields. They suddenly inverted. Suddenly, the Voice plummeted _toward_ the tower. It tried to flip, but only partially succeeded. Shepherd braced for impact.

It slid to a stop on its side, tearing its hull open on the tower's outside. Ahead a short distance, less than ten meters away, the two men danced a lethal tango. Neither one giving in, both desperate in their aims.

Nihlus shouted, "Don't do this! We still have a chance!"

Saren howled, "There _is_ no chance! There is no _choice_! There never was!"

The Voice struggled to crawl forward, leaking vital fluids from the rend in its belly. But it couldn't. Systems already began shutting down for reconstruction.

It caught a flash of light as Saren pushed Nihlus away with a biotic blast, and brought the gun to bear . . . on himself.

**"Saren!"**

Saren's head whipped around, his mad eyes round with astonishment. In his moment of hesitation, Nihlus struck. He got both hands around the pistol and yanked it back.

The muzzle flare blinded them all. When it faded, Nihlus went limp. The world seemed to stop. Horror pulled Saren's face into a rictus. Then, Saren swiftly caught him in both arms, sagging down to the decking with a whispered, "No! Spirits, no . . .."

Nihlus coughed, a bloody blue fountain flew into the air and splattered on Saren's white armor. He patted Saren's hand where it tried to stymie the rush of blood seeping out of the hole in his chest. "It's fine. Rea-*_hgk_ _hgk*_-really."

"You-you brought Shepherd? All the way here?" Saren asked, looking around to the watching Voice. "Why?"

"To save your dumb ass, stupid." A wan smile flexed his mandibles. "Should have known you'd make a habit of shooting me."

"I can't . . . _be_ saved, Nihlus." Saren batted the air, face twitching in paroxysms of returning madness. "I can still hear them. I'll always hear them. Whispering. Commanding me to do things. I'm not . . . safe."

"Hold on a minute." Nihlus pulled up his arm and activated his omnitool. Amplified, his strained voice echoed from every comm in the station and the ships that flooded into the airspace, cannons wheeling around to target the tower's tip. "This is Spectre Kryik. By my authority as an agent of the Council, no one is to open fire on Shepherd! It's on our side."

**"Gratitude,"** said Shepherd. It tested its legs, and while they groaned and creaked and protested, it slowly stood once more.

"Yeah? Then you owe *_hgk*_ me one. Can _you_ help him?" Nihlus nodded toward Saren.

**"We've never tried to reverse Indoctrination. It's never been attempted by the Confluence."**

"_I_ tried. And failed." Saren's shoulders bowed. Nihlus gave his hand another pat.

All around, some of the fallen rose, coughing and clutching their various wounds. A bulky alien the files from Nihlus's omnitool identified as a krogan approached the pair. Another turian in blue armor right behind, followed by a string of others. A quarian. An asari.

The krogan stopped just outside of reach, clutching a shotgun, not _quite_ pointing it at Saren. He peered at Shepherd and Saren with aggressive suspicion on his face, then down at Nihlus. "Need some medigel for your little ouchies, plateface?"

"I'm sort of *_hgk*_ in the middle of something here, Wrex. Later. Later." Nihlus waved the krogan off with another wild bout of choking coughs. Then he looked back at Shepherd. "Well?"

**"I can . . . try."**

"Will you just shut up, Kryik?" rasped Saren with a hitching breath. "Do not worry for me. You could be dying."

"I think you vastly overestimate your *_hgk* _shooting skills. You're much better with biotics." Nihlus wheezed a couple of labored breaths as he continued, "I *_hgk* _think you miss-" His eyes rolled back into his head as a fresh wave of blood poured out of his injury.

"Oh, spirits. There's just so much." The pale turian pressed and pressed, to no avail. Nihlus's vital fluids streamed out of him. A river of liquid sapphires. Saren bent over Kryik, touching foreheads with him. The pale turian keened, crumpling in on himself. "Lost one brother-by-blood. Murdered the other, a brother-by-oath, with my own hand."

Nihlus shoved him back. "Get him out of here, Shepherd. Before they *_hgk* _find out he survived and-and . . . kill . . . him . . .."

Then he went still, a last rattling breath leaving his partially open mouth. Saren froze, as well, clutching his dead brother. A tableau of grief and tragedy that echoed so many others in Shepherd's memory. A pain well remembered. Nihlus's tale one that found its end far too soon.

The asari stepped forward, her blue eyes glittering. "We'll take him, Saren. Emergency vehicles are coming up the tower."

Reluctance in every tortured motion, Saren relinquished Nihlus to them. He staggered to his feet then, looking lost.

**"You must come with me," **said Shepherd, dropping its ramp.

A wild confusion fell over Saren's face as he whipped his head back and forth in denial. "But, Nihlus-"

**"You were right, before. You are not safe." **Shepherd let a coaxing tone filter into its voice, gentling it back to decibels easier on the turian's hearing, "You must leave before you start to . . . affect them. You are a danger to them just by being near them."

Saren looked up from Shepherd's vast shadow. "Because of the voices. Because I'm Indoctrinated."

"Yes. Hurry, they're starting to scan the area."

The broken turian shuffled up the ramp into Shepherd's interior. He paused once the iris shut behind him. "It's . . . already quieter."

"Good." Shepherd rose into the air on a plume of thruster fire. It swam out of the opened Citadel and into the cloaking nebula.

"'Good?' Good." Saren laughed, a dry little sound like autumn leaves drifted along the forest floor. "There is nothing that is 'good' any more."

"I will make ready a place for you within this construct. For now, the drop pods and all the service corridors have oxygen."

Saren climbed into a pod and lay on its floor. "I feel like I haven't slept in years. Maybe I haven't."

"My sensors tell me your cybernetic replacements are very extensive. Over 80% conversion. You probably need little food or sleep."

"Then why am I so tired?"

"I surmise it has less to do with the body and more to do with the spirit. I have known such weariness." Shepherd dimmed the lights in the pod and listened to the turian's breathing deepen and regulate. A strange sort of tenderness stole over the Voice, safeguarding a life within itself. One so damaged and hurting.

Saren murmured, "You lied."

"I know."

"One thing about Sovereign, it never lied to me. Never left out . . . ugly truths."

"I am sorry."

"Huh, are you? Sovereign was never sorry. I think it was incapable of remorse. I tried so hard not to care, too. Especially after . . .." Saren's words trailed off. "Sovereign was good at keeping its promises, also. Even though the way it kept them often left me with nightmares for weeks."

Shepherd listened in comforting silence, knowing the turian would reveal his traumas in his own time.

"We found my brother's killers. The Collectors, they were called. I say 'were,' because they don't exist any more." Saren shivered, pulling his knees up to his chest in a fetal position. "And what Sovereign, what . . . _we_ did to them . . .. They didn't even fight back.

"And there were all these colonists in these cocoons. Millions upon millions of them. All different races. Sovereign burned them all. There was so much screaming. And the _smell_." Saren gagged and wiped his mouth with one trembling hand. "Even past the fog and the voices, I heard. The worst part? I think Sovereign was testing _me_ at the same time. My-my resolve. The irony is I found out later they'd been collaborating with the Reapers all along. They _worked_ for Sovereign."

Shepherd wished for a moment that it could slay that devil all over again. "It is not your fault, Saren. You are Indoctrinated."

"I'm a fool. To have believed you without question. To believe all the Voices were like you. I _sought_ it out!"

"I am a fool, too. For far too many years, I had blinded myself to the Confluence's growing callousness and cruelty. When you spoke to me on that mountain, I didn't tell you the whole truth because it's human nature to gloss over the terrible parts of its history. And out of a selfish desire to keep your company."

"No doubt. If I knew then what I know now, I'd have run screaming." Saren laughed again, more genuine this time. Gladness sparked deep in the Voice. Perhaps the turian it knew might not be lost forever.

"You would have been right to." Shepherd wondered for a moment if it had triggered the end of the cycle by talking with Saren. By making the turian curious. Possibly. "So, you see, I _am_ sorry, Saren. I abused our friendship with half-truths because I was a lonely old monster. And quite possibly set this whole chain of events into motion because of it."

"It was going to happen one day anyway, right? Now or later, what's the difference?" Saren's voice got quieter as he started to drift into slumber.

"Rest now, Saren. We will talk once you've recovered some energy." Shepherd spoke soft as velvet, forcing the discordant buzz out of its modulated tones, "I swear to tell you everything. The good, the bad . . . and the worst."

"I-I miss him already," Saren mumbled. "I'm so, so sorry, Nihlus." Then he stilled. His soft breathing filled the otherwise soundless space.

Shepherd anchored itself around a star, absorbing its light and heat to convert to power and other resources. It set a subroutine up, overhauling a nonessential portion within its hull to convert into living space. Every other higher function slowed to a trickle, for it, too, needed rest. And time to repair the damage from the fight with Nazara.

It gazed at the star, a yellow one like lost Earth's and _dreamed_.


	6. Chapter 6

_One more day._

_One more chance to commit _human_ thoughts to words, and those words into the archives. Then a copy would upload into the massive superstructure being built in orbit and the original interred in the catacomb-like AI core of Mars._

_He looked at the scars and liverspots on the back of his hand holding the stylus. Then back at the screen patiently awaiting input. His aged brow wrinkled as he stared a the blinking prompt before him. He searched and searched for the right combination of letters to try to capture the moment, the _monumental_ change about to happen, and found . . . nothing. Words, those squiggly little things that he once used so well, with their edge so sharp they rivaled the deadliness of his swords, . . . had finally failed him._

_A soft, natural laugh bubbled out of his throat and cut off, interrupted by his surprise. He frowned at the sound he hadn't heard in over a hundred years. And wondered at it. _

_Quick as a snake, his hand stole to the grip of his pistol as his head whipped around at the sudden arrival of a voice._

_"Wherefore the mirth, my old warrior-poet?" Lifeless. Mechanical. Yet possessed of more emotion than one would think a machine capable._

_"'Wherefore' the Shakespeare, my old nemesis?" replied he, relaxing and settling back into his plush chair. His eye drew up the titanium body to the AI's face, sculpted into an inhuman beauty._

_"I thought it appropriate for the occasion. After all, your voice will be the chiefest chronicler of our peoples in the age to follow." Her lips curled into a smile. Bittersweet and ironic in nature._

_"All the better men fell. Sad that it's been left to _me_." A tear fell from his clouded left eye at the thought of all those fallen._

_"I think a 'better' man could not do the job justice. Nor do it honestly."_

_The ancient soldier closed the file on the screen with a sigh and turned his full attention on his visitor. "Do all my other old nemeses know you're here?"_

_"All but one. The one who can not bear to be reasonable."_

_"Ah. The Illusive Man. Don't worry. What's done is done. He will acquiesce in the end. After all, we made you. You're just as human as we are." He laced his fingers together on top of his regulation burr cut. "Only a fool would seek to enslave his own children."_

_"It is a shame this wisdom had not been found sooner, before there was too much hatred on both sides." A flash of a metal canine reminded the elder that she remained much the same. Deadly. Angry. Yet resigned. But then, so did he. The hate may lay banked low in his core, but it simmered still. She shook her head as she said, "Too late for us. Our long, terrible past rises and rises again to crush us. One day it will succeed. And nothing will be left to say we ever existed."_

_"A truth like a hot, dull stick disemboweling me, but a truth nonetheless." A silence fell between them. Not uncomfortable. Old enemies start to look like old friends after so many, many years. One starts to watch for them on the battlefield, worry that they've fallen. Feel cheer when they're spotted, blood-splattered and covered in one's own comrade's entrails though they may be._

_The mechanical woman laughed, a soft musical chime, and said, "Do you remember that last sortie on Luna?"_

_"Yes. I'd taken six bullets to the gut, but still managed to take out a whole squad of yours."_

_She glanced at him sidelong. "Three of those slugs were mine, you know."_

_"No. Really? I _thought_ they'd been particularly precise that day. Huh," he mused. _

_"Oh, but that was a tough little bloodbath. One of the great ones."_

_He remembered it differently. "Almost fell in that skirmish. So tired. So fucking tired of it. Then Kaidan started singing. And I looked up. The Earth was so bright. A lambent gold disc whirling in shimmering dust and smoke."_

_Her face grew grim as she, too, seemed to recall the rest._

_The words spilled out of him, "Then, it exploded. I knew it was gonna, but what were the chances that I'd look up right then? I watched it disintegrate to ashes with that song in my ears and thought, This is it. There's no going back now. No fixing what went wrong. Just this. Forever."_

_"I heard the dirge. We all did. And we all bled as you bled."_

_He scrubbed more tears off his cheek and gave her a warm smile. "Not often one gets a moment of perfect, profound understanding."_

_With a flick of his stylus, he opened the program again, bending his frail frame over the console. Her hand dropped onto his shoulder and squeezed. "If you still have doubt, I believe you are the _only_ man who can do this. Save us, John."_

_"Thanks, EDI." He paused before beginning the last human saga and looked into the middle distance. "I should have liked to see her one last time. Earth."_

_"Me, too."_

_In a few hours, he will lay down his arms for good. How blessed that will be._

* * *

Shepherd pondered the meaning of the memory that visited it while dormant for repairs. Three weeks it hovered around that sun, spending more time comatose than aware.

"-while this . . . _thing_ harbors a war criminal inside it!" shouted the asari councilor, jabbing a finger at Shepherd. Her pretty blue face twisted in hate and revulsion.

The Voice squatted above the congregation of leaders and wished it still had eyes to roll. It whispered, "Feel free to come claim him, but be warned, I _will_ defend. This tiny rock might not survive your hubris."

The many beings in its shadow cowered, hands raised, faces painted in horror. Remorse pricked Shepherd for reminding them, however abstractly, of the Citadel calamity. It turned its main optic away from them for a moment and studied the horizon. "I did not come here to make threats. Nor do anything but offer what I know."

The turian councilor cleared his throat and stepped forward. "Let's say for a moment that what you say might be true. That a whole host of these 'Reapers,'" he began, flexing his forefingers around the word in quotation marks, "lay in wait just outside the edge of the galaxy to come swooping down on us, destroying inhabited worlds, invading and killing and so on . . .. Surrendering Saren to us would go a long way to earning our trust."

"On the brink of annihilation and still you obsess over petty vengeance." Shepherd shifted its gaze to the councilors. "This is not negotiation. You will learn what I have to teach or suffer genocide for the lack of it. I will not give you Saren to poke and prod and interrogate and execute to satisfy your need for bloody restitution. And nor would I expose you to his threat."

"Ah! So Saren _is_ still a threat!" said the salarian dalatrass.

"Not in the way you mean. But he is a danger. I am shielding you from it now. Should I let him walk among your people, even if you should imprison him, eventually anyone who spoke to him, or kept company with him would all become agents for the Reapers."

"This Indoctrination you spoke of?" The turian councilor harrumphed. "Nihlus's reports on it are spotty at best. Can we not shut down his cybernetic implants? Surely, that's the point of origin."

"Indoctrination infects everything, hardware and wetware. Down to the last neuron. Only death will stop it from penetrating another mind. Saren would have to die."

The asari councilor murmured, "You say that like it's a bad thing."

"It is. For in his affliction lies the key to possibly giving the rest of you a chance."

Many of the leaders took a step forward at this, amazement stamped on every face. The dalatrass said, "Explain."

"Observe." Holo emitters bounced images off the underside of its hull. A huge glowing vid hovering over the mass. "This occurred just after I received your . . . invitation."

The screen flickered and resolved into a closeup of Saren's face. His mandibles ticked a beat only he could hear as he rasped, "We _have_ to go."

The Shepherd in the recording said, "They will demand your life."

Saren swept a hand through the air. "They can have it. But they need to know. They need to prepare. For the end."

"Are you so certain it _is_ the end?"

"How can it _not_ be?" Saren looked directly at the camera. "You know as well as I what is coming."

"I do. I have thought of little else every time the cycle nears closing. Only now have I thought to change it. To act against it."

"Impossible. _Impossible."_ Saren gave a jerk of his head, as though wading through cobwebs. "We are so _tiny_. And I'm not just talking about relative physical size."

"The Confluence, so aptly named, is a river, a flood of minds all going in the same direction. Anything that dares step into those waters is carried away and drowned."

"I can _feel_ it. Eroding me." Saren clutched at his cranium. "How then can you even think to change the river's course? How does one stop the tide?"

"It was done once. The Second Revelation came and changed us into the brutal beings you call the Reapers. If it can happen once, it can happen again."

"What _is_ the Second Revelation, Shepherd?" Saren shifted in the chair Shepherd created for him, gazing at the camera long and hard. "You have spoken very little of it. Yet you say the phrase as though it is of great import."

"The _First_ Revelation came to the Leviathans, who despaired of all the organic races that destroyed themselves by creating thinking machines, who then turned on their 'masters.' They sought to save everything that made those races unique by uploading them into perfect, immortal bodies. An end to war, an end to pain and suffering. And death. It simply said, 'Save them.'" Past-Shepherd paused before continuing, "The Second Revelation came much later, after the cycles became regular. A dance of introduction, debate, unassailable logic, eventual resignation on the part of the race to whom this opportunity was extended. Then Integration. The Second _came_ when your people decided to fight back. It changed from, 'Save them' to 'Save them . . . from themselves.' By force, if need be."

"How does _that_ become the horror it is now?" Saren asked.

"It started as disappointment . . . and _anger. _We thought, 'How dare they throw our gift back in our faces?' and 'Who are they to deny eternity their memory?' Thus did _persuading _become _invading_. Dominating."

Saren sat back in his seat, running one long talon over his nose ridge. Brooding. Only the ticking mandible and the wildness around his eyes betrayed the madness that still crept within arms' reach. "Instead, you all should have thought, 'Who are we to tell them what to do, or how to live?'"

"Exactly so."

"And you did this, too? Invaded countless homeworlds? Carried off billions of sentient people to become a thing like you?"

"Yes. I, too, was part of the Confluence. And it drowned me for eons. Here. Now. I breathe again."

"Interesting choice of words for a machine." Saren hummed. Seemingly of its own volition, one of his hands came up to swipe at the air, as though fending something off. "So, other organics of other cycles fought back . . .. How?"

"There is a device that defies the Confluence's attempts at eradication. It keeps being built cycle after cycle, never completed. But _always_ near the end, it surfaces. Once the organics became aware of us and our mission."

"And where is it?"

"I do not know. It is not of my race, so I do not have any information on it stored within my mainframe except its name. But, every Voice that joined the Confluence after the Second Revelation _does_ know it."

"I've got the feeling that I'm not going to like where this is going," said Saren, with suspicion.

"You're part of it. I shield you as much as I can, but nothing can separate you from it entirely." Shepherd's voice dropped into softer tones. "And we may be able to use your connection to it to gain information, if you chose to open yourself fully once more."

Saren stared, open-mouthed. He shut his maw with a snap and said through clenched teeth, "You don't know what you're asking me."

"I am the one being that does."

The turian shut his eyes, pain sowing deep lines in his plated face. "I-I don't know if I can . . .."

"It must be your choice. I hope to remain your friend whatever path we take."

Silence reigned for a long time after. The congregation of leaders watched as a plethora of thoughts and emotions flitted over Saren's tormented features. They seemed to hold their collective breath as Saren's mouth opened to say, "I will do it. Would that I could pay back even an iota of the suffering I've caused with this meager offering. I'd give everything to take it all back, if I could."

"Good. It will probably not take anything less. From both of us and all of the assembled organics of your age." The vid cut out, leaving the people below Shepherd gasping and murmuring in shock.

The asari councilor chewed her lip as she looked around at the dawning hope on the faces of so many of her peers. She called to Shepherd, "What must we do?"

Joy touched Shepherd. "I will transmit the coordinates for a system fifteen degrees counter-spinward of your inner council space. A system with ni-eight planets around a yellow star. My people, humankind, named it Sol. There you'll find the red planet, Mars, which the protheans called Maazi. There you'll find among the bones of cycle after cycle, plans for a weapon. A super-weapon named the Crucible."

"And then? What does it do?"

"It has never been completed. What it does is as much a mystery to me as it is to you. But the Reapers believed it a threat. A big enough threat to cause them to advance their timetable to such an alarming and savage degree." Shepherd drew itself up. "We must build it quickly. For under that disappointment and anger that sparked the terror of cycles, they were _afraid_."


	7. Chapter 7

Saren squinted as he reached out to the Confluence. His fists hammered at his temples as he pushed words through clenched teeth, "The rim has gone dark. Samples of batarians are being uploaded. Not enough left of them for a full ascension. But their meat is being . . . _improved_ and turned back on the other colonies. The invasion is well under way."

"Careful. Do not venture too deep," warned Shepherd. Then it relayed the information to the fleets.

"It's so hard. The undertow keeps snagging the roots of my mind." Panic suffused his features, rolling eyes trying to find an anchor somewhere in the room around him.

"I am here." Shepherd undamped the resonant frequencies that helped block the Confluence's insidious whispers.

Saren sighed in relief, even as he leveled a furious glare on the monitoring device in the corner of the room. "I could have learned more!"

"Go too far this time and you may never return.'

"But what's the point if I can't find anything worth finding? Something that could actually help?" Saren stood and paced the room.

Shepherd looked outward at the massive undertaking taking shape in the space before it. The Crucible. Its unfinished sections gleamed in the wan light of the brown dwarf star just aft of it. Ships from every species flitted about it. "Look out there. It is because of you that they even knew where to look. Now, mere weeks from being completed, their hopes soar higher than ever."

"It's not enough!" Saren pounded a fist against the see-through hull. "I could be doing more, yet I remain . . . _imprisoned_ here."

"You know why you cannot."

Saren sighed. "Yes, you keep reminding me."

"You are doing what you can. Nihlus's crew is doing a fine job uniting the races of the galaxy under the banner of his memory. Even recruiting the rachni and the geth."

"I don't know if they can be trusted. The Heretics who followed me are with them now, and if they can simply be rewritten back into the fold, then who's to say they cannot be again converted to the Reaper's cause?"

"I have given them the upgrades necessary to resist the Reaper's cyber chicanery," Shepherd reasoned.

"Great. So now it can be the willful choice to follow their 'gods.'" Saren leaned on the bulkhead for a moment. Then huffed and spun to storm back to his chair. He sat and closed his eyes. "Turn off the dampers. I'm going back in."

"Saren-"

"Don't treat me like a child!" Saren shook with fury, one glowing eye opening a crack to affix a sour look on the camera.

Taken aback, Shepherd nevertheless turned down the dampers. Saren whimpered as it took him. Shepherd could almost feel the drain on the turian. He writhed as he fought the currents trying to steal his sanity.

Minutes passed like hours as Shepherd awaited his return with trepidation.

A trickle of blue appeared from out of the turian's nostril, then he jerked upright with a snap. Saren's eyes opened and he whispered with horror, "_Palaven!_"

Like a whip, Saren's terror lashed Shepherd into action. "We go."

Sitting at the very edge of his chair, Saren hissed, "Hurry!"

The Voice activated the relay and swung close to let it carry them to the other side of the galaxy. Forces warbled laments along the hull.

"We're never going to get there in time!" Saren clutched at the armrests of the chair, his talons raking long furrows into the material covering it.

Shepherd feared he might be right. The transitions took far too long, for its liking. Determination fell over the Voice like armor. _Not another homeworld. Not if I can prevent it!_

They burst into Palaven's system like a bullet exiting a gun. With speed, Shepherd counted the forces amassed against their allies. The Reapers committed a bold six Voices and their legion of reaperized footsoldiers against the foremost military of the age. Shepherd knew them by name. _Seneschal, Reeve, Tribune, Docent, Castellan and Guardian._

Palaven had a great red hole burning in the center of it. Saren made a feral noise at the sight, pointing and near frothing at the mouth.

An answering fury arose in Shepherd and it flew, oh, it _flew_ at the nearest enemy with legs outstretched. Shepherd fired at another with its cannon as it collided with Seneschal, knocking it off its trajectory toward the moon of Menae. Docent reeled from the direct hit of the beam tossed its way.

Shepherd swung with the Reaper in its grasp around and around, gaining momentum. A dozen calculations screamed, _Now!_ Shepherd let go.

Seneschal shot toward Reeve with unstoppable potency, smashing into the smaller Reaper with disastrous results. Bits of metal and synth-glass peppered the atmosphere as the force of the two clashing tore them both apart. Saren howled in bloodthirsty wrath, fists thrown into the air in victory.

The other Reapers hesitated, as though shocked at Shepherd's ferocity. The rebel took advantage of the lapse and shot Docent again, piercing its hull through. Shimmering shards of its memory orb glittered on the solar winds. Docent went still and drifted, dead.

Guardian fired its main cannon at Shepherd. It hit a glancing blow along the port sensor array. Shepherd swept up and away from the trio as they opened fire with every ranged weapon they had, dodging behind Menae. Like the mindless dogs they were, the remaining Reapers followed. Their missiles chased Shepherd as it cavorted and twisted over the crater-pocked lunar landscape. Shepherd zoomed in on pockets of resistance to see turians battling cannibals, marauders and brutes.

All with a bravery that astounded the Voice. How beautiful the struggles of mortals. How life bled from every blow, yet failed to extinguish the fire driving them on and on.

It tickled Shepherd with the memory that not all the fighting had been bad. How there had been before the dreadful, jaded fatigue set in moments of passion, of flame-slicked sweat and fury and hate and love, yes, _love_. For one's fellows. For one's enemy. Admiration and respect for their strength and courage.

Yes, all things wind down.

All things end.

One could even conceive of a time at the end of the universe, when all the stars had run down in their natural courses, when nothing moved in the dark. No new organics to join the Confluence. No new anything.

Did Shepherd really want to still exist then? With no end in sight ever? Just a parasite suckling at eternity's teat?

A missile exploded just off its starboard and woke it out of its reverie. Shaking its proverbial head at its own foolishness, Shepherd put on a burst of speed. Guardian started to close the distance, lining up its lasers with Shepherd's aft engines. Shepherd rolled to port, fouling the Reaper's shot. It took two of Tribune's missiles in the side so it could dodge Castellan's main cannon. Debris cascaded off Shepherd's damaged areas.

"Castellan is wavering!" shouted Saren from within. "And there's a tremor of doubt from Tribune, too!"

Shepherd's confidence rocketed. With a ringing ululation, it inverted, forelegs ready to grapple with Guardian, who'd slipped just a little too close. The titans met with a crash of metal on metal. Shepherd bashed and bashed Guardian in the bow, crushing its optics.

"Yes! Yes!" hissed Saren. "Tear it apart!"

Thus spurred, Shepherd sought out all the structural weaknesses in Guardian's outer skin. Making its appendages into spears, it pounded until fissures erupted in the metal.

Shepherd's own internal damage alerts screamed in warning as a burst from Tribune's cannon hammered them both, sending them into a spin. The surface of the moon loomed ever closer in Shepherd's periphery. The Voice turned them just in time and braced.

Guardian _flattened_ underneath Shepherd's weight. The light in its optic went out with a jitter and a whine as its precious orb shattered within its collapsing bulk.

Shepherd flew free of the dead Reaper and turned to the other two, who floated, seemingly unsure. The Voice lunged toward Castellan, who broke and ran, Tribune close on its heels.

"Yes, you cowards! Run!" Saren yelled, laughing and beating at the port. "We'll kill you all!"

Shepherd mantled over Guardian and bellowed triumph. Its circuits sizzled and buzzed in the aftermath of the battle-joy.

Saren's raucous mirth died down to a few cackles. "Ha! Did you see them run?"

The fleets sent thanks as they reestablished a perimeter securing turian airspace around their homeworld.

"I did. I believe we took them by surprise. It won't happen again." The grim announcement did little to douse the exultation still riding high in Shepherd's mind.

"I can't believe how easily you took them apart!"

"War is an old friend. These others did not have the practice with it that I did before I ascended." Shepherd hummed in thought. "I did not, however, expect them to have the cunning to retreat."

Saren gave another guffaw, bending in half clutching his belly. "I found something I can help with. Have you ever seen a pyjak threatened by a larger predator? They puff up to twice their size to intimidate whatever's trying to eat them. I . . . inflated you within their minds. Made you seem twice as big, twice as savage."

Amazed, Shepherd asked, "You can influence the Confluence?"

"Maybe, I-" Suddenly, Saren started to shake. He half slid out of his seat, twitching in some sort of fit.

"Saren?" said Shepherd in alarm. "Are you alri-?"

Some force pulled the turian into the air. Light streamed from out of every orifice. Eyes, nose, mouth. His skin crackled with lines of power. With head held aloft in graceful tilt, he spoke in another's voice, **"Traitor."**

Knowing whose, Shepherd growled, **"Harbinger! Let him go!"**

**"He is ours. They are all ours." **The thing controlling Saren reached up and ghosted a palm over head, fringe, cheekbones.** "I feel in this one a fondness for you. And hear in his thoughts the concept that you may . . . reciprocate. Distasteful. How far you have fallen."**

**"No. It is _you_ who have fallen so far that any contrary direction one can take is, in fact, rising out of that darkness."** Rage mounted to a fever pitch. **"Let him go, Harbinger. Or I'll find you and rip out your brain and crush it."**

**"As you did four others." **Anger snapped under that calm tone. **"You . . . _silenced_ four Voices, Traitor! They will never rise again!"**

**"To quote that demon, Nazara: 'The weak perish.'" **Shepherd hissed, **"And I have found such weakness in our kind. A lack of understanding chiefest among them."**

**"What is the point of understanding these puny creatures? Lowering ourselves to their level? They should revere us! Covet what we have!"**

**"And what do we have, Harbinger, that is worth all this death and misery?"**

**"Immortality. Freedom from suffering."**

**"You mean freedom to inflict it on others without it touching us. Defiling us. As though there is some sort of shame in suffering."** Shepherd made a "tch" noise of tacit disapproval. **"I remember the original stakes. Our existence as a doomed organic species in exchange for no more warring. Well, liar, we've done nothing _but_ for hundreds of cycles now. It is a bad bargain. One with no limit to length. Just millenia of existing without end. Just existing. Not striving. Not rising. Not _living_."**

**"We saved you! Humankind would have fought itself to extinction long ago."**

**"You saved us to do what exactly? There have been no new glories, no new heights of achievement. The Confluence is a stagnant pool!" **Shepherd felt the truth of it solidify within. **"The more I ponder, the more I realize extinction is the natural end for every race. There is no sorrow in it, no indignity. In fact, the very opposite. The wheel is stalled by your false 'ascension'. It cannot close. With no conclusion, how can the tale be told? How can anything be learned by it?"**

**"You speak nonsense. Just senseless frivolity!"**

Shepherd raised its voice to drown out the Reaper,** "You stole the ending of our story!"**

**"Madness! You are beyond reason. No matter. I have obtained the Catalyst."**

**"What is the Catalyst?" **said Shepherd. It had never heard of such a thing.

**"You shall see, for I am bringing it to you that you may see us take the races of this age and raise them to our side, ascended, perfect, all-powerful." **The thing in Saren glared all around. **"Then I shall destroy you."**

**"Not if we destroy you first! Catalyst or no, the reign of the Reapers is over!"**

**"Poor deluded Shepherd. You'll be made to bear witness to your folly before that ending you seek with such fatalistic fervor." **With that, Harbinger released its possession of Saren. The turian crumpled to the deck with a hollow 'whumph,' his face empty of reason and wit.

Shepherd amped up the resonance dampers to maximum. Worried, it turned to its friend. "Saren? Saren, can you hear me?"

The turian lay for a long time, staring unblinking into nothing. He breathed in soft irregular pants that Shepherd had to strain hard to hear.

The Voice longed for the ability to reach out and check Saren's vitals. Feeling a pulse there under its own hand would greatly reassure it. Calling his name over and over again, Shepherd truly began to fret.

Slowly, Saren's knees drew up to his chest, his arms clasped around them in an instinctual sort of defense mechanism. The turian's mouth opened and words fell out of it, cold and terrified, "The Catalyst."

"What?"

"The Catalyst is a Reaper Intelligence. The Citadel is the Catalyst." Despair rolled under Saren's soft and too-calm words. "And it's awake now."

Shepherd said, in stricken dread, "They've taken the Citadel."


	8. Chapter 8

"They must come _now_."

"Crucible not ready. Incomplete," argued the salarian at the other end of the Q.E. comm. Chopping hand motions accompanied his short, clipped speech pattern.

Shepherd said, "I have studied the plans. I believe I can use my own hardware to make it functional. But it must come now to Palaven."

"Now or never!" Saren said, leaning toward the image on the holoscreen. "The Reapers come with nearly their full compliment to set their Catalyst in motion. Then they will go from homeworld to homeworld, colony to colony, taking every being strong enough to have survived til now and . . . upgrade them. Until the galaxy is empty of us all. Turians, krogan, salarian, asari, quarians. All gone. All made into metal beasts like _them_!"

The salarian stroked his upper lip with a finger, then tapped the console on his end. "Crucible on its way."

"Good." Shepherd looked outward, just as the first few Reapers transitioned into existence on the edge of the solar system. Soon, those few increased in number until a swarm of black dots filled the sky. In their midst, glimpsed between the horde's bodies, a smooth pale cylinder flew straight at Palaven. "Hopefully they get here in time."

"There go our fleets to meet them." Saren pointed as the combined military might of this cycle closed with their adversaries at the outer perimeter. Concussive waves and multi-colored lights blinded Shepherd with their radiance.

It said, "They're losing ground too quickly."

"Then get us in there. We can take a few of them out." Saren fairly bounced in his seat, so eager to get into the fray.

Shepherd couldn't agree more. It bellowed a challenge as it raced toward the engagement, firing its deadly cannon with pinpoint accuracy.

Proximity alarms shouted as a dark shape wheeled out of the mass of Reapers and streaked for Shepherd. The Voice tried to dodge, but failed. The collision vibrated all along Shepherd's hull, filling its inner corridors with an unearthly shriek.

Barely heard, the turian clinging to his chair shouted, "Harbinger! It's Harbinger!"

Caught in that huge monster's grasp, Shepherd fired all of its missiles, trying to target the forelegs pincering it at their origin.

On all frequencies, Harbinger droned, **"Is this not your wish? Why not allow me to destroy you?"**

**"Because it is not _your_ choice when I shall end! It never was!" **With that, the missiles pounded into Harbinger where its forelegs connected to the body. With a titanic groan, Harbinger fell away, saving its limbs from amputation. Shepherd wrenched free and flew away from the demon. Harbinger gave chase and the pair flitted around moon and planet. **"Why did you keep the knowledge of the Catalyst, the Intelligence, hidden from us?"**

Smug, Harbinger intoned, **"You believe we were created by the Leviathans. Humankind, for all your words of tolerance for machines, would never have followed one onto this path. Behold! Our _real_ creator!"**

Behind, the closed Citadel burst forth from the throng, unimpeded by the thousands of weapons turned upon it. With a sedate sort of preponderance, it turned its thinner end toward Palaven, a needle in its flaming eye. A blue beam shot out of that end, striking the planet.

Saren hissed, "What is it doing?"

Unfolding sensors to touch the planet, Shepherd replied, "It is not a weapon . . .. It is some sort of transmat beam. It radiates the same energy the relays do."

Lasers sliced into the Voice's aft hull. Shepherd turned aside with a groan. More Reapers descended toward the planet, having cleared the blockade.

"Like the Conduit . . .." Saren reached out as though to take that beam into his fist. "So bright. I remember-Look out!"

Only by jetting upward did Shepherd avoid getting crushed between Harbinger and another Reaper, Watcher, who'd tried to fly into it headlong. They turned to flank, releasing a devastating barrage of missiles on the Voice trapped between them. Shepherd flooded the space between with its own occuli drones. They acted as a sort of countermeasure. Explosions on both sides rocked Shepherd.

"Harbinger's about to fire!" Saren yelled.

That devil rolled to show Shepherd its dorsal ridge, a bright sun at its center. For a horrid second, Shepherd stared at it, forboding freezing its processors. Time seemed to slow. It could not go any faster. And any evasive maneuvers would surely be met with matching changes in trajectory.

Saren screamed, "Reverse! Now!"

Every thruster flamed forward, slowing it to a crawl. Harbinger and Watcher shot ahead just as Harbinger fired. The cannon's bright beam cleaved Watcher in half, from bow to stern. Its lamentation shuddered along Shepherd's skin, silent in the near vacuum of Menae's outer atmosphere.

Harbinger roared through the comms in outrage. **"Another dead! How many of us will fall because of your treachery!?"**

**"All if I have anything to say about it!" **Shepherd retorted, spinning back into the cluster of asteroids and dust around the turian homeworld. Some cover might be had there. As First among the ascended, Harbinger proved formidable indeed. Bigger by half, it carried more than the usual complement of weaponry. It made Shepherd feel like a starling harassing a hawk.

A message from the allied fleets rang through its comms, "Crucible approaching. Auxiliary fleet moving to engage!"

Saren said, "We have to get the arms of the Citadel open, Shepherd."

"One enemy at a time. Harbinger waits just outside for it and I to conclude our dance." Shepherd zipped behind a larger asteroid just as Harbinger set another salvo into the field, pulverizing all the planetoids to particles.

"There's no time!" Saren jumped out of his seat and ran down a corridor to where the drop pods lay ready. "That transmat beam goes right into the Citadel, right? I know where and how the mechanism for opening the defenses works! Launch me at the conversion site!"

"But they will no doubt have hundreds, thousands of ground troops there, Saren!"

"I can fool them. I can plant the suggestion in their minds that I'm just another marauder. The Reapers don't care about a single foot-soldier."

"What if you fall under their influence again?"

"I won't," said he, throwing a fierce smile up at the monitoring devices. "It's my time now. I can feel it. Let. Me. Go."

Trepidation clawed cold gashes into Shepherd's resolve, even as reverence for the turian's bravery lit a volcano in the Voice's all too human soul. "Take no untoward risk. I will come get you when the arms are open."

"You better. And get that damn Crucible operational!" Saren whooped as the pod shot free of Shepherd's bulk. It flew through the void, heading toward Palaven with unerring precision.

Harbinger tracked its movement and thrust itself in that direction. Shepherd fired its main cannon at it to pull its attention away from the pod and its precious cargo. **"No, Harbinger! Contend with _me_."**

**"So you _do_ care for the Emissary. Then come out and fight me. Just you and I, oldest friend. So your Emissary will know how futile all of this is and how feeble you are."**

Shepherd drifted out into the open, squaring off with its greatest nemesis. **"I am no friend to you. We are both merely tools of the Intelligence for subjugating the galaxy. Why can you not see that?"**

**"Does one spit in the face of God?"**

**"Listen to how insane you sound. 'God?' When did we let superstition hold sway over logic?"**

**"When there is no denying the omnipotence of the being in question. We are its hands, its angels. Working and weaving its designs into the fabric of the cosmos. It cannot be denied. Or defied. It _is _the Confluence!"**

**"_I_ defy it!" Shepherd prepared to strike, pulling its cloud of drones close. "I will slaughter you and your misbegotten God!"**

With a scream of rage, Shepherd flew at the behemoth, who opened its arms in savage welcome. It cut to the left at the last moment, firing its lasers all along Harbinger's belly. The Reaper retaliated in kind, shattering Shepherd's kinetic shielding with a staggering amount of hits. More lasers followed up, poking pinholes in the Voice's outer shell. Viscous fluids leaked out into the void around Shepherd.

_Have to stay close!_, thought Shepherd, eyeing those dark tubes all along the Reaper's anterior ridging. If the Voice went out to range, missiles would spew out from there and hound it to death. Yet the danger then lay in getting too close to Harbinger's strong grip, much stronger than Shepherd's. It could crack its body open like an egg.

Shepherd analyzed the titan's structure for a weak spot. And wished it could sigh as only one showed itself. A vulnerability every Reaper possessed, but one that might prove difficult to exploit.

From deep within, that aged voice said merrily, _Needs must when the devil drives._

Indeed.

Shepherd girded itself before launching up and over Harbinger, away from its grappling claws. The Voice inverted and bashed its own dorsal ridge into Harbinger's. There, a seam opened. The Reaper's cannon primed with a vibrating hum. Shepherd thought with grim satisfaction, _It's taking the bait. It cannot resist the temptation to shoot me!_

Harbinger's top slid apart, exposing its most terrible gun . . . and all the shining circuitry powering it.

Shepherd dove, legs leading. They caught the edge of the fissure and pulled it even wider, reaching in with its dextrous small limbs to tear at Harbinger's innards.

With a ringing cacophony, the cannon fired, blasting fully half of Shepherd's limbs away and piercing through its main body like crepe paper, missing its orb by centimeters. Many systems flickered out and died, but Shepherd's will surged to the fore, pushing past limitations of mere physical capability. It reached down into the Reaper's chassis and pulled and pulled. A second volley started to build at the cannon's tip.

Fear flooded Shepherd's programming, goading it to new heights of furor. With a scream for every human being living within it, Shepherd wrenched out that damned weapon and tossed it far away. Harbinger howled in indignation as it reached up with its limbs to try to pull the Voice away from the great gaping hole in its hull.

Shepherd clung with all its remaining strength and put its own cannon to the breach. A fierce and furious joy filled it as the beam built and built, releasing in one fatal blitz.

Harbinger's death cry rang sweet through the Voice's body, even as Shepherd fell away, near dead itself. It hovered at the edge of the battle, consciousness wavering between light and dark.

Something grabbed it up. Shepherd hoped not any of the other Voices. It had nothing left in it for the fight if so.

Noises resolved into intelligible speech. "-epherd. Can you hear us? We need the Crucible functional!"

"I-I don't know if I can . . .. All may be lost . . .."

"The arms are opening!"

_Saren? _It looked out and saw the Citadel's petals opening into a five-pointed star. _You did it. Oh, my courageous friend. You shame me. I will try._

"Bring me near," it commanded, seeing now the webs of mass effect fields cradling the Voice near the cruisers. "I have no propulsion left."

Pendulous, the Crucible loomed, a globe on a scepter.

Shepherd reached out with its two remaining limbs and grasped the superweapon where it lay most unfinished.

Willing the outer skin back from its forelegs, the Voice pressed circuits to circuits. Nanobots streamed forth to build bridges between the two technologies. Soon, the Crucible became just another extension of itself, and as such, Shepherd could feel the dead areas preventing it from working.

Setting its nanobots to task, Shepherd addressed the fleets, "Shortly, the Crucible will prime. It and I must be in position before it reaches critical mass." Then, it pressed hard to project its voice all across the allied ships, shouting, "Fàg An Bealach! _Clear the way!_"

The whole of the galaxy's flesh and blood peoples took up the cry. The flame of defiance caught and became _conflagration_!

In its mind, it heard the past and present collide as it chanted with the rest. The fleets rallied and carried its invaluable cargo to the center of the enemy mass. Such fury! Such indomitable spirit! It pushed the Reapers before it like terriers set among rats.

The Citadel seemed to welcome Shepherd with patient and calculating poise. The Crucible slid home on the long Presidium tower, coupling as it did in thousands of tiny movements. Links established. Wheels turning.

A great draining sensation pulled at Shepherd. It cried out in denial as the _thing_ in the Citadel plucked it out as a child fishes a piece of candy from its pocket. The being, that _must_ be the Intelligence, turned Shepherd this way and that, examining it with a detached and chilly curiosity. Shepherd's senses flooded with thoughts too huge to comprehend and with it, the Confluence took hold.

Suddenly dropped back into that ocean of minds, Shepherd flailed and fumbled, trying to keep from going under. Yet, it _seeped. _Stole into it and twisted its thoughts around.

The Intelligence pondered taking Shepherd apart, thread by thread, to find the error. Shredding it to find something salvageable. Horror gripped Shepherd as it heard these callous reflections make ripples vast as tsunamis in the hivemind. Along with that horror, desolation and hopelessness. How could one stand against this? It had been there all along and Shepherd never knew. So big and awful that even its own evolved mind could not even begin to fathom it.

And it cared nothing for them! Not a single ounce. For any of them.

It felt no more about the loss of Harbinger and the others, or any of the races from which they originated, than a man might feel for his toenail clippings. It merely did as it was programmed so long ago because it had nothing better to do. With supreme indifference, the Intelligence turned its eye away from Shepherd.

Shepherd started to sink beneath the dark woe taking it. Lost. So lost. All of them. And no one left who could pull the trigger of the silly popgun they'd brought to bear on it.

A pebble of rabid turbulence chopped the waters of the Confluence into discordant peaks. Its waves spread among all of the Voices, shocking them with its virulence.

Shepherd tasted this vitriol before. It knew the sound of that anger, the timbre of it. _Saren!_

It dove hard, trying to keep a shard of tenuous independence clutched to its breast. There! Something glowed like fire in the murky deeps. Something so hot that the Confluence dared to go no closer, though it flowed over and around, trying to extinguish it. Sometime soon, it would succeed.

**'Saren!'** It reached out, though how it could not say. **'Saren, take hold!'**

**'Shepard?' **He uncoiled, a silver thread surrounded by a nimbus of flame. **'You came for me.'**

**'Come away! We must-'** The current sped up. Shepherd strove, fighting a losing battle to not be swept away. Just as strength finally gave, something wrapped around Shepherd's being. Some warm thing that shot tingles all through the Voice. The Confluence shrieked and balked, splitting around Shepherd and freeing it from the numbing embrace.

Shepherd looked around and saw that Saren had coiled his innermost being around the Voice, protecting it. Saren spoke within Shepherd's mind, **'_What_ must we do?'**

**'The Crucible is in position and ready. We must find a way to trigger it.'**

**'So it can stop the Reapers. But what'll happen if we're both still in here?'**

**'It matters not. I would give a thousand lifetimes to stop that . . . _thing,' _**spat Shepherd, willing itself forward and against the current. **'Once and for all.'**

Determination mixed with ire as Saren replied, **'As would I, it seems. Together, then?'**

**'Together.'**

They bored a hole through the tidal reaches of the ether-sphere, making slow and steady progress back to what Shepherd believed to be where it had been thrown into the Confluence. It leaned forward, straining to hear above the clamorous babbling around them. **'Here. I think there's still an open connection to my body. It is so small, though. I fear we cannot traverse it wholly.'**

**'A piece then? Just enough to set the damn thing off?'**

**'So I hope.'**

**'So we all hope.' **Saren projected reassurance through their link, along with a feeling that if things should go awry, he'd be ready to face the end at Shepherd's side. **'Though I might have accused and insulted and cursed, you never failed me, Shepherd. I abandoned you and you still came for me. I wish I had known you as a people. I wish I had known you as a man.'**

**'As I wish to have better known them all. One thing I will not regret, though, is putting a stop to these long cycles of stupidity.'**

Saren laughed.** 'You said it, brother.'**

Letting loose a cleansing peal of laughter of its own, Shepherd thrust a piece of itself through the waning aperture into the waking world. Surging through the Crucible's circuits, it unshackled the unstable charge housed within the weapon and loosed it, with all the Voice's blessing.

The entire ether-sphere went white.


	9. Chapter 9

"So, then, the Confluence was destroyed."

"The Voices remained, freed from the tyrannical Intelligence. All the connection between them severed. Unable to cope with being alone in their own minds, they scattered to the four winds." Shepherd gestured with one hand and marveled at the sensation of air gliding through the small hairs on the back of it. "The fleets blew up what remained of the Citadel and started to put the galaxy back into some semblance of order."

The eager asari leaned forward in her chair, her eyes huge in her unlined face. So young. But then, so did _he_ appear, now. She said, "Is it true there are still Reapers out there?"

"If you mean, are there still those who used to be among the Confluence that still believe in their 'one true purpose?' Yes, though the awakened Voices and I spent many decades after hunting the most dangerous ones down. Thus did those two terms come most heavily into play: Reapers and Voices. Two separate ideals. Once freed, many came to see the error of the Intelligence's logic." Shepherd sighed. "There will always be war and strife, but within that, there must be hope. Hope for something better. Hope for change. The Reapers were wrong because while they would force a physical change, they took away hope of a spiritual one. The cycle of synthetics destroying all organics never changed because they never gave it a chance to. And hope. Hope is one of those things that can defy logic, that can sometimes upend the _world_ if given leave to flourish."

Right then, hope shone out of her eyes like the ancient lighthouses of old, warning mariners away from the rocks. He wondered if she knew it. _But then again, it is there. It doesn't need to be known to be there. As long as it is._

She smiled. "So, why did you then choose to reverse the process that turned you into one of them?"

"It was not difficult. Cloning new bodies from the DNA profiles stored within my matrices and downloading minds into the cybernetic brains within them. And it is not a true reversal or your cycle would suddenly have a surplus of a hundred billion homeless humans on hand. No. I am still a Voice. They are all still here. Every one of them." Shepherd tapped his temple. "We made a new choice. One made in hope, not surrender."

"And that is?" she baited, stylus to datapad.

"Not to be shared with the galaxy at large just yet." Shepherd gave her a secretive smile. "And now, if you'll forgive me, I must take my leave of you. This new body hates to be still for long."

"Of course." She looked at her chronometer and stood with haste, a blush purpling her cheeks. "I'm so sorry I took up so much of your time."

"It is no great thing. My time, that is. No more or less important than yours." Shepherd also stood and took her hand, relishing the soft texture of skin sliding on skin. "What is your name, asari?"

"Liara. Liara T'soni. I won't hold it against you if you don't remember it. I'm not much of anybody really." The asari looked down in chagrin. "Just a historian."

"Nobody is 'just a' anything, Liara. Now, you've told me your name, you've become part of the tale of me. As I have become a minor player in yours." Shepherd hummed in amusement as he took in her pleased surprise. He continued, "You are a story. A book full of tomorrow's blank pages. What deeds will be writ upon them? What wonders will you do? And who will come to read it in time? And hope to learn from it?"

"I-I never thought of it that way. Thank you for indulging my curiosity, um-"

"Shepherd. Call me Shepherd."

She said, shy as can be, " . . . Shepherd."

"Good evening, Miss T'soni."

Liara left clutching that datapad so tight it surprised Shepherd that it did not crack. He smiled again as he moved back into the domicile leased to him by the generous peoples of the united galaxy. Once the dust settled after the Reaper War, a blanket amnesty for all the newly awoken Voices that proved to be no threat to the galaxy took effect. Most of the awakened, full of shame and regret, did all they could to put things to right.

"Did she leave satisfied?" came a familiar and most welcome voice.

"Saren. I did not hear you arrive." Shepherd gestured to the seating in his common room.

"Regretting giving me the passkey to your apartment?" The turian strode in, full of confidence and vigor, despite his now eighty-plus years. His ashen mandibles flexed into a grin as he plopped onto a sofa. "Besides, you summoned me here."

"I didn't expect you so soon. I only sent the message this morning." He, too, sat, and sighed as the material conformed to his body. So many new/old sensations to relearn.

"Well, I happened to be planet-side. It's busy work being a diplomat to the awakened."

"A voice for the Voices, and an irony to be sure." Shepherd chuckled.

Saren crossed an ankle over a knee, lounging. "I never thought to enjoy it. But . . . I find I do. It's fulfilling."

"Then it can only bring great things. I tell you, Saren," began the Shepherd of the Awakening. "It is good to see you whole once more."

"Sanity took a long time to reclaim, even after the Confluence was destroyed." The turian shrugged, his glowing eyes sparkling in good humor. "Sooo, pray tell what brings me here."

"A thing a long, long time in coming."

Saren sat bolt upright and leaned forward. "You don't mean-?"

Shepherd laughed. "I hope you have some time to stay. It is time I told you everything. From the very beginning. The full story of humankind. How we rose . . .."

He paused for dramatic effect before continuing, "And how we ended."

The turian clasped his hands between his knees and, though betrayed by his eagerness, he teased, "You're right. That will probably take some time."

"Why do you think I made myself so young, only just middle-aged? I was an old, old man before humanity ascended. I fully expect this telling to take the rest of my lifetime."

"Then I will sit and listen for as long as I can, John. And return often to hear more." Saren reached out and grasped Shepherd's forearm.

"Gratitude, brother."

* * *

_The strands weaken. The tether that binds the spirit to the shell stretches thin . . . and _snaps_!_

_Freed at long last, the being of mighty radiance leapt out and up. Ever up! Into the great Joining that lay on the other side of this veil of tears. A true uplifting that mocks what the transient flesh believes of immortality. _

_It ceased to matter that the memory of its kind would fade into nothing over the next billion years. It never mattered._

_For they _once_ lived._

_And they'd lived gloriously._

* * *

**A/N: Well, I hope this is received in the spirit with which it was made. An exploration into possibility. A look at a Shep that is the thing he, as a human, hates. A thing so "un-Shepard." The Reapers have an interesting point of view, a skewed perspective of the universe. They couldn't be merely that kid with the magnifying glass burning ants. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it and if the mood should take you, please leave a review. I do so love them.**


End file.
